I was promised a rich, dense, crispy on the outside, fudge-y on the inside cookie, but that is most definitely not what I got. Instead, I got a light brown cookie that was a bit too dry and a bit, dare I say it, flavorless. What went wrong? My cookies usually never go wrong. Have I lost my touch?

Nah, I think it had something to do with the fact that this was my first time attempting to bake entirely gluten-free. (Some people have severe intolerance of or allergies to gluten, a primarily wheat-derived protein.) I used a recipe from Simply Gluten-Free that I chose because it looked easy, and it had the fewest ingredients: 2 egg whites, 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 1 cup almond meal, 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Apparently, all I had to do was to mix all this together, spoon the dough onto parchment paper-lined cookie sheets, and bake it for 11 minutes at 400 degrees.

Simple, right? It seemed so to me, but looking back, my problems may have begun at the grocery store, where I couldn’t find almond meal (also called almond flour, which consists of finely ground almonds), so I picked up some all-purpose gluten-free flour from Bob’s Red Mill. An innocent substitution, I suppose, but the chemistry of this particular gluten-free flour mix might have had an inadvertent effect on my cookies…

When I set about mixing together the dough, it was far too dry—so much so that I added an extra egg white. Misstep No. 2? Maybe.

Next time I make these—and there will be a next time, because I’d like to get them right—I’m going to follow the original recipe exactly, and hopefully they will turn out better. I think it will take a bit more practice (and a few more minor errors) to get a handle on the basics of gluten-free baking. Time for some research…