Last month my mother-in-law broke her ankle. Poor thing. Thankfully she was cleared for surgery quickly and got it all bolted up. The weekend after her surgery we headed down to New Jersey to look after her. One thing she and I have in common is that we love sweets and cookies. I couldn’t expect to cheer her up without a special treat so I made Smitten Kitchen’s Espresso Chocolate Shortbread Cookies (with a few tweaks of my own).
Domestocrat’s Dark Chocolate Chunk Espresso Shortbread (makes 15 big cookies)
2/3 tbsp. espresso powder
2 sticks (8 oz.) butter
2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups AP flour
2/3 cup dark chocolate chunks (chocolate chips would work fine here too)
This recipe is super simple: in a stand mixer or big bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and espresso powder.
Slowly add in the flour.
The last step is to mix in the chocolate chunks. Snacking = mandatory.
This next step is key and bless Smitten Kitchen for passing it along.
Load all of the shortbread dough into a large ziploc bag. A 1 gallon freezer bag works really well.
When the dough is in the bag use a rolling pin to roll out a nice even layer inside. This sounds hard but trust me, it’s super easy. Just make sure you got all the way to the edges and get in the corners. When this is done stick the bag in the fridge for at least 1 hour. This would be a great make ahead recipe because you could do this overnight too. Don’t worry about the dough sticking to the bag, once it chills it definitely will not stick. When the dough had chilled remove it from the ziploc bag. I found that the easiest way to do this was to simply cut it off with my kitchen shears.
Roughly mark the size of your cookies and cut into squares with a pizza cutter. If you don’t have a pizza cutter a big knife will work just fine.
Prick each cookie with a fork on the top. Bake on a parchment paper lined baking sheet at 325 degrees for 15-17 minutes, rotating the pans once at the halfway point.
Gently transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and cool completely before eating.
These cookies were so good – buttery, rich, and sweet.
The dark chocolate adds the perfect warmth and the espresso powder lends that bakery perfect touch.
Domestocrat 
Those look delicious! Do they have any coffee taste to them since they are vanilla shortbread? When I bake chocolate things, I put coffee in them, but you can never taste it.
They don’t – I just use the espresso powder to amplify the chocolate flavors. Works like a charm!
Neat! Baking magic! I am going to try to make these with Earth Balance sometime.
Let me know how it goes!
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