recipe! espresso, pistachio and chocolate chip cookies
There's a lot going on here, and all of it's good.
From Dec. 22, 2023 until Feb. 16, 2024, I did not bake a single thing. My KitchenAid mixer got nearly two months of rest. But other than perhaps prolonging the life of my favorite appliance, very little good came of such a long baking hiatus. I don’t think I got healthier. I definitely didn’t get happier. Maybe, though, maaaaybe I got a little bit more creative. Because when the baking itch hit last week and I finally had time to mess up my kitchen, I dreamed up a cookie that, well, is very much worth dreaming about.
espresso, pistachio and chocolate chip cookies
adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s salted chocolate chunk cookies
active time: 20 minutes
total time: 50 minutes + the time your dough needs to rest
makes: 18-20 cookies
Last spring, I embarked on a baking project that I thought might take six weeks. It ended up stretching through the summer and into the fall, but after chewing through unholy quantities of butter, chocolate and sugar, I landed on a winner in my chocolate chip cookie bracket: Smitten Kitchen’s salted chocolate chunk. To me, at least, these cookies had three standout qualities. They contained tons of chocolate. The turbinado sugar gave them a satisfying crunch. And salt! Flaky salt!
That said, I loved a lot of the other cookies in the bracket, including a massive, flat, brown butter, halva and pistachio beauty. As someone who’s never gotten much out of a pecan or a walnut in a cookie, pistachios definitely made me change my tune. Pistachios make most things better. So I started wondering if I could improve upon the bracket-winning cookie. Originally, I planned to see if I could add some pistachios and up the crunch factor — but as I started building this hypothetical cookie, I was also very, very tired, and suddenly, the cookie of my imagination also included espresso.
The real-life cookie is, I am happy to report, as tasty as I imagined — as rich and crunchy and nutty and buttery. It’s doing a lot. But not too much, I promise.
Let ¾ of a cup (170 grams) of unsalted butter come to room temperature on the kitchen counter.
Finely grind about 2 tablespoons of espresso beans. If you have a powerful grinder that can get them to a truly powdery texture, you’ll be all set. If your grinder doesn’t yield a particularly fine grind, then use a mortar and pestle to pound the grinds into a finer consistency. You won’t use 100 percent of the beans you grind, but this should get you in the ballpark. (Alternatively, you can use espresso powder. If you are, do nothing at this step and then double the quantity of espresso grinds later on in the recipe. Espresso powder is weaker than finely-ground beans.)
When the butter is softened but not warm, add it, plus 20 grams of granulated sugar, 30 grams of turbinado sugar and 165 grams of light brown sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer. Cream the butter and sugars on medium-high for 4 to 5 minutes, until the mixture is fluffy.
Add 1 large egg and 1½ teaspoons of vanilla extract to the mixer. Cream them with the butter-sugar mixture on medium speed for about 20 seconds, then scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl and mix again on medium-high speed for about 1 minute.
Add ¾ of a teaspoon of baking soda, ½ of a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, 10 grams of finely ground espresso beans (or 20 grams of espresso powder) and 210 grams of all-purpose flour. Pulse the mixer on low speed several times to begin to incorporate the dry ingredients, then mix on medium until the dry ingredients are just incorporated. Your dough will be somewhat crumbly.
Mix in 210 grams dark or bittersweet chocolate chips and 65 grams of chopped roasted pistachios — only until they’re just incorporated. Cover your dough and refrigerate it for at least 4 hours and ideally overnight, though if you must bake your cookies immediately, they’ll be fine.
Once the dough has rested, take it out of the fridge and preheat your oven to 360°F. Scoop the dough into 2-tablespoon balls; you should wind up with 18 to 20 cookies. Place them on parchment-covered baking sheets, sprinkle them with Maldon salt and bake them for 12-14 minutes. Because of the espresso in the dough and the color it lends the mixture, it’ll be harder to tell that the edges are browning, so you’ll have to trust your instinct on when to remove them; essentially, you want the top to be something more solid than mushy and the edges to be just beginning to brown.
Let the cookies cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, and you’re good to feast.
Do you have any left?