White Chocolate & Pistachio Dipped Cookies

  • White Chocolate & Pistachio Dipped Cookies

    I need more pistachios in my life.  (I also feel like I need more cilantro and cumin, and adventure, but I’ll stick to the sweet stuff since I know that’s what you came here for.)

    I’ve already bored you to tears with my soliloquies about shortbread cookies.  You know I love them, you know it’s a requited love, and you thought I was done waxing on about them like a girl with a crush in eighth grade.  No.  Not even close.

    Remember when I made the Nutty Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Cookies?  It was then that I knew I had a lifetime of shortbread-dipping possibilities ahead of me.  In the same way that I keep beautifully bastardizing my World’s Greatest Fudge Brownie recipe (man, let me just tell you that I have a winner recipe coming up- and it involves BLONDIES- not a lot unlike the The Ultimate Brownie Blondie Layer Bar, which deserves a shout-out at this very moment), I can take the shortbread dough and put a twist on it like no other.  So prepare yourself for several thousand deviations in the years to come, since you’re along for this ride with me.  (Because you have subscribed to this site and therefore we’re committed in some way to one another for pretty much ever.  And if you haven’t subscribed?  Well.  What are you waiting for?  It’s on the right side of the page.  Subscribe, then make these cookies.)

    Oh yeah, these cookies.  White chocolate + pistachios = holy shit.

    Adapted from my Classic Shortbread Cookie recipe…

    2 cups all-purpose flour

    1 1/4 teaspoons salt

    1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (room temperature)

    1/4 cup granulated sugar

    1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

    1 teaspoon vanilla

    3/4 cup white chocolate chips or chunks off a block, melted

    3/4 cup pistachios, toasted and finely chopped

    1. Sift flour and salt together in a small bowl and set aside.  Cream butter with a stand mixer (or hand-held mixer) until light (2 – 3 minutes), then add sugar and beat for additional 2 – 3 minutes (scraping sides of bowl a couple of times throughout).  Add vanilla and mix until combined.  Add flour & salt combo and mix on low speed until dough is just incorporated together into a ball.
    2. Pat dough into a flat disc and wrap with plastic wrap; chill until very firm (at least an hour).  Roll dough into 1-inch thick balls in your hand (you might need dough to ‘warm up’ a bit to do this).  Chill dough balls until firm before baking.
    3. Preheat oven to 325°, and bake shortbread until firm to the touch and turning golden brown (about 20-25 minutes).  Cool on a wire rack.
    4. In a small shallow bowl, melt white chocolate in microwave for 1 minute then stir.  (Microwave for additional 10 – 15 second increments if necessary.)  Dip tops of cooled cookies into white chocolate and sprinkle chopped nuts over chocolate right away.  Let set for about 30 minutes.

     Tips:

    • Check out the official shortbread tips in the original post.  Remember to bake these for the full time, until they are quite golden brown and smelling up a storm (like browned butter- a smell like no other, really.  I think I just might brown some butter today for no reason just to have that smell in the place.).
    • Toast the nuts… spread on a baking sheet and pop in a hot oven for like 8 minutes.  Done.
    • Sprinkle the nuts right after you dip the white chocolate or they won’t stick.
    • Dip thoughts… you could dip the bottoms of the cookies in white chocolate too, if you want.  Just let them dry/set on a sheet of parchment paper so the bottoms look smooth.
    • Nuts… yes, you could switch the nuts to macadamia nuts, or cashews.  They don’t toast as well (because they are so wonderfully greasy, like peanuts), but the cookies will still taste almost too incredible to eat.
    • The black thing in the picture above.  Yeah, I have no idea what that is.
    • Enjoy! 

     

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    July 19th, 2014 | More Sweets Please | No Comments | Tags: , ,

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