Dark Chocolate and Pistachio Cookies

Some days you just need to bake.  Maybe you don’t have those days, but I do.  It’s been over a week since I last baked and it makes me a little sad.  How does my life get so busy that I have don’t have time to do the one thing I enjoy over all other things?  Between setting up & cleaning my new classroom, visiting with a friend over Labor Day weekend, and the start of a new school year, I just have not made the time to bake something wonderful.

After my first full day back I needed the comfort of baking.  I am teaching on a new floor this year and it’s a little strange.  Usually I see the same people everyday and we talk and laugh together, it’s surreal to go a full day of work and not even see these people now.  Cookies are comforting.

Cookies are effortless to throw together.  Cookies are not like cupcakes which have frosting components and filling components and cake components – with cookies you mix, you scoop, and you bake.  That’s it.  You’re done.  That’s my level of baking today, simple, but with complex flavors, obviously complex flavors.

I love the texture the pistachios provided to the cookies – toothsome, yet soft.  The subtle pistachio flavor is magnificent.  And have I mentioned the large disks of dark chocolate throughout the cookie?  Well, they are there!  Break open a cookie and watch the decedent dark chocolate ooze its way out.  This is a recipe for a perfectly tender, chewy, melty, chocolately, interesting, and fantastic chocolate chip cookie.  My only change – more smoked sea salt.  Make sure you’re generous with the sprinkle of sea salt.  You don’t have smoked sea salt?  No worries, using any flaky salt!

Print the Recipe!

Dark Chocolate and Pistachio Cookies
Adapted from Joy the Baker via Smitten Kitchen
Yield – 30 (2 tablespoon cookies)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 cup shelled pistachios, chopped
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (Guittard 72% dark chocolate wafers)
smoked sea salt (I bought mine through King Arthur Flour)

1. Preheat the oven to 300 F and line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Cream together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment until pale yellow or about four minutes.  Beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.  Scrape the bowl as needed.
3. Whisk together the flour, soda, and Kosher salt.  Add to the wet ingredients and beat until just combined.
4. Chop your pistachios and add them to the mixer with the chocolate chips.  Mix until everything is combined.
5. Use a 2 tablespoon scooper to portion dough on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle each cookie generously with sea salt.
6. Bake for 18 minutes and cool completely on a wire rack.

I love this plate – it says “It’s okay.”  It’ll all be ok!