The Cookie with the Magic Center: Chocolate and Pistachio Cookies

A friend recently gave me a copy of Honey & Co. The Baking Book, written by the proprietors of Honey & Co. in London. I've never had the pleasure of dining at the Middle Eastern restaurant, but reading through the cookbook makes me want to visit.

 

The first recipe I tried from the cookbook was the "Chocolate & Pistachio Cookies." The recipe seemed quite simple, and I loved the fact that the cookies were generously coated in chopped nuts. The headnote says that: "The appeal of these cookies is tremendous -- soft fudgy chocolate encased in mega-crunchy nuts." I made the dough in my KitchenAid mixer with the whisk attachment. You whisk eggs and sugar until very thick and fluffy (the recipe describes this step as whisking them "to a sabayon"); fold in melted chocolate (I used Callebaut Recipe No 2815); and add bread flour, baking powder, and salt. The recipe says you should rest the dough for about 30 minutes in a cool place, or in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. I needed to chill my dough for probably about 40 minutes until it achieved a scoopable consistency; I think this might be because the chocolate I used has very high fluidity.

I used a #40 scoop to portion out the dough (getting 17 cookies from a batch), and rolled each cookie in chopped pistachios before baking.

The recipe says that although you can easily pick up the cooled cookies, "the middle will stay nice and soft life a moist chewy brownie." That description undersold the end result. These cookies had a crisp exterior and an interior that to me seemed more like a chocolate truffle -- rich, moist, and fudgy, but somehow offering no resistance to the bite. They were freakin' delicious. A recipe that somehow created these three distinct textures -- crunchy nut coating, crisp exterior shell, and truffle-like interior that was somehow not fully set -- seemed like a magic trick. One that still has me amazed.

 

Recipe: "Chocolate & Pistachio Cookies" from Honey & Co. The Baking Book by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich (the American version of the cookbook is called Golden).