Espresso choco chip shortbread cookies

 

Now, cookies are something I always see on blogs, drool  upon, wonder if I should try them and tell myself that I can never pull them off and close the blog dejectedly. In addition to my doubts on my baking capabilities, there is one more reason. I can never afford to eat that much butter. The amount of butter in the cookies is just plain… humongous! And there is no way on earth I can make and eat them and not feel guilty.

But this one particular evening, after having had loads of cookie discussions with friends on Twitter, and after having stared at this recipe page (link in the Recipe courtesy below) for a considerable amount of time, I decided I will try baking this one.
So what if it uses an entire butter stick! (Too scared of the amount of butter in this, I decided to halve the portions, though)

Oh but then, I knew I was having guests who were to stay over, so I thought I’ll bake these cookies for morning coffee and impress them.

Ingredients:

1/2 tablespoon instant espresso powder(Nescafe it is!)
1/2 tablespoon boiling water
1 sticks (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature(I used 100g of Amul butter)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips
 

Procedure

1. No need to preheat the oven now :)
2. Mix the espresso powder with the hot water to make strong coffee and set it aside to cool
3. In a large mixing bowl, mix the butter and the sugar well enough to make a smooth mixture. Add the coffee and the vanilla essence to this mixture
4. Add the flour to this mixture and mix just enough

5. Take a small sized zip lock bag and transfer the batter into the bag. Lay it on the counter and even it out carefully, so that there are no creases in the plastic sheet. Also be careful to not let the batter out of the bag. Once the batter is spread evenly to all corners of the bag and is of even thickness, close the bag and put this in the refrigerator

6. I let this bag be in the fridge overnight, and removed it the next morning
7. Preheat the oven to 200C and line up the baking sheet. I wrap my grill with aluminium foil and use that as the baking sheet. Gives me a lot of space. Yet again, a friend gave me this idea.
8. Cut open the plastic bag, and cut even squares of the batter

8. Put these on the baking sheet atleast 2 inches apart from each other and bake them at 185C for about 15 mins.
9. I had to flip the cookies and bake the other side for 4 mins too

10. Did you spot a mistake that I did here? Well, I turned lazy midway and tried putting as many cookies as possible on the sheet, and see what happened. Luckily, this wasnt a huge mistake, and I could easily break off the cookies that were stuck to each other

We enjoyed them in the balcony with lots of conversations, and had a great time. But there is no way I am going to bake these cookies all for ourselves. I even gave away half the amount of cookies to S’s colleagues. They were addictive and we were scared we’d eat them up ourselves and then roll over in guilt :)

Recipe Courtesy : Smitten Kitchen (Check out her photos. They are enough to make you drool!)