Triple Chocolate Espresso Bean Cookies Recipe
Dark chocolate cookie recipe, each cookie pumped full of lots of freshly ground espresso powder.
Today's recipe is for you coffee lovers. I had a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans on hand and thought it might be interesting to bake them into a cookie. A dark chocolate cookie. A dark chocolate cookie pumped full of lots of freshly ground espresso powder...
Whole wheat pastry flour, Alter-eco all-natural, unrefined sugar, chocolate coated espresso beans
I used a whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour. The more I use this flour for quick breads, cookies, and muffins, the more I love it. People think whole wheat and they think heavy - not so with whole wheat pastry flour. It is ground from a softer, starchier wheat berry which turns out a talcum soft, fine, off-white flour. It has less gluten than flour ground from hard wheat berries and is good for recipes where you want a tender crumb. Because it is a whole wheat flour it all of the wheat berry is used - the germ, the bran, and the endosperm. It is a whole food and all the good, nutritious parts are part of the final flour.
Cookie batter just before stirring in the espresso beans
Take a look here, the final dough is a thick and rich, creamy brown in color tinted by the cacao powder. It gives of a aura of dark chocolate spiked with the smell of the inside of a bag espresso beans. Every time I make cookies I have the same exact conversation with myself, right after I mix in the dry ingredients I say to myself, "I probably shouldn't sample the dough, it has raw eggs in it." And then I proceed to eat some regardless.
So, consider yourself warned - this is a cookie dough you can't resist sampling, raw egg roulette is in your future if you make a batch. Hopefully you have more willpower than I do and at the very least buy good, fresh, organic, free range eggs.
Fresh from the oven
Here's what the insides of the final cookies looked like. They were deliciously sophisticated in flavor with the crunch from the espresso beans playing off the dense cakey-ness of the cookie. Next time around I want a touch more ooey-gooey factor, so I'll stir in 3/4 of a cup of semi-sweet chips. I'll factor that into the recipe below.
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Triple Chocolate Espresso Bean Cookie Recipe
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons freshly ground espresso powder
3/4 teaspoon aluminum-free baking soda
3/4 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
3/4 teaspoon finely ground sea salt
1/2 cup natural cocoa or cacao powder (Scharffen Berger or Dagoba), not dutched1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature (soft to the touch)
2 cups fine-grain natural granulated sugar (evaporated cane sugar) - for example, I love Alter-eco brand, OR do 1 1/2 cups sugar + 1/2 cup dark brown sugar2 large eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
8 ounces chocolate covered espresso beans
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
Assemble dry ingredients: In a medium bowl whisk together the whole wheat pastry flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cacao powder. Set aside.
Assemble the wet ingredients: In a big bowl or with an electric mixer beat the butter until it is fluffy and lightens a bit in color. Now beat in the sugar - it should have a thick frosting-like consistency. Mix in the eggs one at a time, making sure the first egg gets incorporated before adding the next. You will need to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice as well. Add the vanilla and mix until it is incorporated.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients: Add the dry ingredients to the wet mix in about four waves. Stir a bit between each addition until the flour is just incorporated. You could add all the flour at once, but it tends to explode up and out of the mixing bowl and all over me every time I do that. At this point you should have a moist, brown dough that is uniform in color. Stir in the espresso beans and chocolate chips by hand and mix only until they are evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Drop the cookies onto baking sheets: I like to make these cookies medium in size (they are rich!) - and use roughly one heaping tablespoons of dough for each one. I leave the dough balls rough and raggy looking - I never roll them into perfect balls or anything like that - this way each cookie will have a bit of unique personality.
Place the cookies in the oven: Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes on the middle rack. You don't want to over bake these cookies at all or they will really dry out. If anything, under bake them just a bit. When they are done, pull them out to cool.
Tip: If you don't want to bake all the cookies at one once you can freeze some of the dough for quick cookies later. Instead of placing the cookies in the oven put the cookie dough balls into a freezer-quality plastic bag and toss them in the freezer. You can bake straight from the freezer at a later date, up the baking time by a couple minutes to compensate for the frozen dough.
Big Batch: 2-3 dozen chunky, medium cookies.
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Comments
omy. as if the three and a half cups of Peet's this morning wasn't enough...and now these! they look and sound soo incredibly...energetic!
Those cookies look soooooooo good! I am going to go make them right now! Thanks for the recipe.
my jaw literally dropped when i opened your web page this morning. seriously? those sound, look, ARE amazing!!! i love coffee. and cookies. both of them together, and with healthiful benefits of whole wheat (heh heh, like it really helps when you eat twenty of them...)???? awesome recipe. i cannot WAIT to try this! i think my heart rate just elevated 200%! :)
Hanna--You can find whole wheat pastry flour at King Arthur Flour. Their web address is www.bakerscatalogue.com. You can also request a free catalogue be sent to your home.
Those cookies are just mouth-watering! Send me all your cookies to be tried. Good choice Heidi!
Heidi--These look beautiful. Thanks for explaining the rationale behind the non-dutched cacao powder. It might be worthwhile to take a few words in the recipe to say why non-dutched powder is important, so people don't substitute thinking it won't make any difference. Is there another reason beyond activating the baking soda, for flavour or so on?
If you're concerned about eating raw eggs, why not just use Energy Egg Replacer? I use it all the time to make cookies and it works fine. Then you can eat all the cookie dough you want without fear.
Oh my god, do those look good! And the most tempting ingredient of all is the whole wheat pastry flour... any ideas how one might get some... even online? If there's one healthy ingredient, it makes up for the rest.
oh no don't do that! i must have them. must must. now.
Looks really yummyyyyyyyyyyy.
Heidi, Hmmm. I think I would try it without the BP just to see what the exact difference would be. Baking Powder is rarely in cookies because it's such a powerful "chemical leavener." BP also will stale these faster so it's something to take into consideration with all the "drying" components. Maybe add another egg and take the leavener content down to a teaspoon. But I say this also because I am very sensitive to BP and try to lessen its use when I can find a way to do so.
wow, these look absolutely decadent but i think they may keep me awake all night! i will have to find a real coffee lover to make these for.
Hi Heidi. These sound delicious. And I don't see any problem with using two leaveners. I often use a combination in my recipes. I'm curious to know why Shuna wouldn't in this case.
Hey Shuna, Here was my thinking re: the double leaveners. Insurance....I almost just went with just the baking soda, but figured some people would swap in god-knows-what for the cocoa/cacoa - dutch-processed cocoa, or something not acidic enough to trigger the soda, and I didn't want them to be disappointed. And the baking soda for its leavening, but also because it seems to temper and take a bit of the harshness off the acidic ingredients (like the non-alkalized cocoa)... Would you have done it differently, or used a different ratio?
wicked..
Wow, those look amazing. If only I could somehow bite through my computer screen and taste... Or I could try making them :) Thanks for the recipe!
Heidi-- I am interested to know why you have 2 leaveners in this dough? For those who may not be able to find alum. free baking powder it is easily made at home: Sift three times: 1/4 cup cream of tartar with 2 Tablespoons baking soda This mixture will not give you the massive rise you're used to, so experiment with amounts. I'm too old to eat these cookies, they'll keep me up all night even if I eat them for breakfast!
These look seriously decadent! I am on a chocolate crave right now anyway, So this just put me over the top! *Evil cackle* I will be making these very very soon! Thanks heaping spoonfuls!
Girl, I am so trying to lose weight right now, after recovering from a double-knee injury. You are *so* not helping! *swoon*
These look and sound absolutely divine. And I love the fact that you are specifically calling for organic ingredients in the recipe. One way to rationalize the extra cost of these? Think of the price of buying just one (no doubt less delicious) cookie from an upscale bakery of coffeehouse. That should pretty much cover the price difference right there. If not, just add in the cost of a $4 cup of coffee to go with the cookie. P.S. I bake cookies all the time, using eggs from my own hens. I doubt that I have ever mixed up a batch of batter without sampling serious amounts of it, and I have lived to tell about it. It's all in the eggs you choose. I also feed raw eggs to my dogs without any worries at all. And their coats look fabulous! : )
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