If you love chocolate and coffee, you are in the right place. Since COVID, I’ve been on a baking spree. Baking simultaneously feeds the sugar monster inside of me, and lets me turn my mind off and relax. Not to mention, it gives me an excuse to binge listen to my favorite podcast Crime Junkie, by Ashley Flowers and Britt Prawat. Since the summer, I’ve dabbled in Filipino food, pumpkin coffee cake, a chocolate and espresso cheesecake, gluten-free cinnamon buns, an assortment of different muffins, a chocolate torte, zucchini bread, different flavors of eggless cookie dough, whole wheat banana bread, and chocolate espresso thumbprint cookies. Can you tell I have a sweet tooth?
While I give the crown to my personal favorite, the chocolate espresso cheesecake, my friends and family have crowned these chocolate espresso thumbprint cookies as Ms. Congeniality. It’s ironic because as far as the original recipe goes, I botched it. Not only did I forget to add salt, but I also forgot the cocoa powder, and completely disregarded the original measurement of espresso. All of which I realized at two a.m. while placing my Frankenstein cookies on the cooling rack—don’t get scared the cookies are actually really easy to bake, I just always find myself baking no earlier than 10:00 PM. Naturally, I’m horrified, I’d doubled the batch to give my boyfriend and his family some and had already been bragging. So, in a panic, my instincts, cultivated from watching everyone season of the Great British Baking, kick in and I grab a container of sea salt to sprinkle over the top in an attempt to try and balance the flavors. Little did I know everyone would end up preferring the cookies baked this way. They were a huge hit. Not too sweet but still rich and decadent enough to satisfy any late-night cravings. Low and behold, my boyfriend’s mother even asked for the recipe. So, here is my version.
Cookie Ingredients:
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1 cup of butter i.e. 2 sticks
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1 cup granulated sugar
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1 egg
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2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
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1 ½ tablespoon instant espresso powder
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2 cups all-purpose flour
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1 tablespoon heavy cream
Filling Ingredients:
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1 ½ cups of chocolate chips (I use 1 cup of dark chocolate and a ½ cup of semisweet, but it doesn’t really matter)
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⅓ cup heavy cream
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1 teaspoon vanilla extract
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4-6 teaspoons instant espresso powder (depending on how strong you want your coffee flavor, I’m a fiend and do all 6)
Instructions:
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Soften the two sticks of butter in the microwave using 10-15 second intervals, you want the butter soft enough to easily mix with the sugar but not completely melted.
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Beat together the sugar and butter using an electric mixer on medium speed until fully combined. The mixture should be light and fluffy!
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Add in the egg and the vanilla extract (I recommend cracking this into a separate bowl, getting bits of eggshell into your mixture can happen to even the best of us and they’re much easier to pick out of a bowl than your dough).
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Begin preheating your oven to 350°F. I know this step is normally in the beginning, but mixing the ingredients together always takes me a while and I hate having the oven on with nothing in it. Don’t come for me…
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Now, depending on how small the granule of your espresso is, you might not have to do this. I use Ferrara Instant Espresso Coffee which has fairly large granules, but if you get Medaglia D’Oro instant espresso, you can probably skip this. Grind up your espresso until it’s a fine powder. If you’re a fancy bitch, use a mortar and pestle. Otherwise, a metal spoon and ramekin work just as well. After you’re done, you can add it to your dough and mix in the eggs, vanilla extract, and espresso using medium speed.
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Measure the flour into a separate bowl. Slowly scoop a third of your flour into the dough and combine it using low speed. After that’s fully combined, you can add in the rest and mix it in on medium!
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Optional: If your dough feels dry, pour in a tablespoon of heavy cream. (If it still feels dry slowly add in more heavy cream. The keyword is slowly! You want your dough to be moist and moldable not liquidy.)
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Here’s my protip, instead of baking your cookies on a baking sheet, grab a mini muffin tin. Line the tin with little baking cups and roll your dough into little balls. Drop a ball into each cup and use your finger, knuckle, or even the handle of a spoon to create a hole in the middle of your ball. This is where your filling is going to go so don’t be afraid to make that imprint large baby! You want that dough to become a little cup for your filling. If you don’t have a mini muffin tin, a non-stick baking sheet works too (I just think the ratio of chocolate to cookie is better in a mini muffin tin). Again form little dough balls and place them on your baking sheet a couple of inches apart. Create your indentations and then pop them in the oven.
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Bake your cookies for eight minutes rotating them halfway through. If your cookies are starting to lose their indentation when you go to rotate them, gently press down the indentations again with a spoon.
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After you’ve cooked them for another four minutes take them out and place them on a cooling rack.
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Now it’s time for the filling! Measure out your chocolate and heavy cream into a microwave-safe container and nuke it at 30-second intervals. You want your chocolate pretty liquidy but if there are a few melted chunks don’t worry about it. They’ll finish melting as you mix in the other ingredients, do not fear.
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After that’s done, add in your vanilla extract and stir it in.
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Next, grind up your instant espresso and stir that into the mixture. If you aren’t a complete coffee addict like I am, add your espresso powder in a couple of tablespoons at a time, and don’t forget to taste as you go.
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Carefully spoon your filling into each cooled cookie until your indent is full.
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Now it’s time for the salt! Grab the biggest flaked salt you have, if you don’t have finishing salt, sea salt works beautifully and you can get all different kinds (pink Himalayan sea salt, black Hawaiian sea salt, or regular).
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Savor and share! <3
I hope you try out the recipe and enjoy it as much as I did! Some people say cooking is an art and baking is a science. I’d say they aren’t mutually exclusive. Some art takes precision and attention to detail, just like baking. In art, they say there aren’t mistakes, only happy accidents. I think that’s a beautiful philosophy for life and baking. If I’d let myself get weighed down by my mistakes that night these cookies would’ve gone in the trash and I would’ve never discovered this happy accident. So, don’t be afraid to deviate from the recipe and have fun!