Pistachio and Salted Caramel Brownie Cookies

Hello everyone,

Today I am going to show you how to make one of our family favorite cookies.

I am a regular cookie baker, given the fact that one of my kids is not willing to eat in the morning because it is too early but I am not happy about letting him go to school with an empty stomach, so our deal is that he takes a cookie along to eat on the way. This is a good reason to make loads of cookies, various kinds.

When it comes to choosing something chocolatey, brownie is in the top three on my list. It is quick to make, very tasteful, fudgy and absolutely versatile, you can combine it with cheesecake, raspberry, ricotta, nuts, all sorts of things really. This brownie – dough cookie is a true hit, the soft in the center, melt in your mouth kind. It is also a working mother safe recipe, it’s very simple to make. To put it short, all you need to do is to melt chocolate and butter, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale, add the chocolate mixture then the dry ingredients, let it set and bake.

It has no special ingredients, I guess most of them you have in the pantry, stocked. The quantity of the chocolate in the recipe seems a bit exaggerated, but brownie is supposed to be chocolatey, right?

For those of you who like to add a little twist to a simple cookie I also made a deluxe, giant, caramel – stuffed version.

Ingredients of the cookie - dough:

• 310 g dark chocolate chips
• 100 g milk chocolate
• 90 g unsalted butter
• 3 eggs
• 100 g icing sugar
• 90 g pastry flour
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• 1/3 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, or seeds of 1 vanilla pod)
• 1 teaspoon granulated coffee
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 100 g pistachios (shell removed)

Topping:

• Maldon salt
• 3 tablespoons pistachios (chopped)
• caramel sauce (see bellow)

Ingredients of the caramel:

• 200 g sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 80 g double cream
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 20-25 whole peeled pistachios (for making caramel - filled cookies)

Tools:

• stand mixer
• parchment paper
• digital scale
• bowls
• cutting board
• silicone chocolate mold
• spatula
• spoons
• knife
• silicone brush
• baking tray

Let's start with the wet ingredients!

Put all the chocolate and the butter in a metal bowl that sits perfectly on top of a medium sized pot. Pour a glass of water into the pot, place the bowl with the chocolate on top and very gently with the water just simmering underneath melt the chocolate and the butter. Chocolate gets burnt easily, so it is very important that the bottom of the bowl should be above the water without touching it. Actually, you don't have to heat the bowl until the whole thing melts completely, you may set it aside when about 50% of the chocolate is melted (see pic. 3.) and stir until the rest is done. Let it cool.

In the mixing bowl of the stand mixer, whisk the eggs, add sugar in two batches and beat them together on high speed until it is light and fluffy. If you compare pictures 8 and 9 you'll see that there is a significant difference not only in color but also in volume of the mixture.

Add vanilla, then the chocolate to the egg mixture, but make sure that it is not too warm (it should not feel warm when touching with your fingers). Mix it in, adding it spoon by spoon.

It's time for the dry ingredients.

Chop pistachios.

In a mid-sized bowl, combine flour, granulated coffee, cocoa, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Add flour mixture to the chocolate mixture in 3-4 batches and mix well with a spatula. It is easier to mix thoroughly if you do not dump all of the dry ingredients at the same time. Add chopped pistachios, combine. Let it sit in the fridge for 2-3 hours or overnight.

There are two basic methods of making caramel, the dry one, when no water is added to the sugar and the wet, which is a truly fool proof way, as with the added water the caramel is much less likely to get burnt. Therefore I usually go with the wet one.

Pour granulated sugar into a thick-bottomed small sized pot, add 2 tablespoons of water, combine. Place water in a glass by the pot with a silicone brush. Place one pistachio into each cavity of the chocolate mold (depending on how many filled cookies you intend to make).

Start heating the sugar at low-medium heat. Do not stir. I know it’s hard to resist, but be patient. First, the sugar will melt and then its color will be changed. Brush the side of the pot occasionally with the brush dipped in water to prevent crystallization on the edges.

Wait until the color turns amber and you can smell that lovely slightly bitterish, caramel smell. Pour the cream into it and keep on heating until it is fully combined with the caramel.

Let it stand for 5 minutes then pour about 2/3 of the sauce into the chocolate mold, With the help of a spoon or chopstick, guide the pistachios back to the center of the cavities.

Place the mold into the freezer.

Preheat the oven to 180 °C (no fan).

Scoop a tablespoon of the dough and place it on a piece of parchment paper then carry on until you have dough left (if you are interested in how to make the caramel-filled cookies, scroll down and save a part of the dough).

Take a dough-pile and shape it into a ball and then flatten a bit in order to form a disc (diameter around 4-5 cm). Line them up on a baking tray lined with parchment paper leaving about 3-4 cm space in between. They will grow while baking but not by much.

Top with chopped pistachios, press them a bit into the dough.

Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 12-13 minutes until set around the edges. Remove from the oven and let them cool on the parchment paper.

Drizzle with caramel (if it turned too stiff, gently reheat is) and sprinkle with Maldon.

For true caramel-lovers, this is the ideal choice. They are somewhat more laborious to make, but certainly worth the effort.

Take about 1.5 tablespoons of dough and make piles. Flatten the dough more than when making the plain cookies, it should have the thickness of a pancake. Prepare all your dough-discs, you need two discs to make a cookie.

At this point, grab your caramels from the freezer, pop all you need from the mold and place each one in the middle of a cookie disc (half of the discs). Work quickly and do not remove the caramel bonbons from the freezer before you actually use them, because as you’ll notice, it loses its firmness in a flash, and then it is a total mess to work with.

Place the other flattened dough-disc on top of the caramel bonbon, Pinch the edges of the two discs together with your finger, place them on a parchment paper and freeze for 20 -30 minutes.

Bake the filled cookies in the preheated oven at 180 ° C (no fan) for about 15-17 minutes. They may seem slightly undercooked but don’t forget that they keep on cooking while cooling. Sprinkle with Maldon and enjoy!