Coffee Walnut Cookies

Sarah from Room for Tuesday is hosting a Blog Hop Cookie Swap! The participants are linked at the end of the post, and everybody is sharing a different cookie recipe today. There are some great ones, but I’m also enjoying the peek into everybody’s kitchens.

Coffee walnut cookies are so easy to make, which is great because they’re the first thing I’ve baked in our new oven! I think there’s always a bit of an adjustment from one appliance to another, but in our case we jumped from a 100-year-old cast iron antique to the double-oven range of my dreams. That’s a full post of its own for another day though — let’s get to the cookies, shall we?

I love sweets and baked goods, but not when they’re too sugary. These are cookies, but they’re scone-like in taste and texture (and thus can be justified as a perfectly fine breakfast item).

COFFEE WALNUT COOKIES
• 1-2/3 cups flour
• tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp instant espresso powder
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup walnut pieces
• optional: chocolate chips

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one at a time, then the espresso powder. You can also use instant coffee in a pinch, but the coffee flavor will be far more subtle. Incorporate the flour mixture, then fold in walnuts. These are fantastic with chocolate chips too, either incorporated into the dough or added on top.

I first made these cookies after a recipe by Nigella Lawson, from her 2005 cookbook How to be a Domestic Goddess. I’ve altered the recipe but stay generally true to the original. (Her book is one that I’ve turned to again and again. We’ve made her banana bread too many times to count).

I spoon the dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. I don’t have a great gauge on time and temperature, but do know that these are very forgiving cookies. In our old oven, I would make these at the “warm” temperature (it ranged from warm, to hot, and then very hot) for about 6 minutes. They’re supposed to be baked at 350° for 10-12 minutes but they were done sooner than that in my new oven too. So basically bake them at whatever, check on them, don’t let them burn. Scientific! (Like I said, these forgiving. My baking methods are all skewed from working with the antique range for so long, but these cookies have a high success rate with all kinds of variables.)

I know this looks like the world’s tiniest batch of cookies. I need to buy new baking sheets now that we’re going to bake in an oven that can fit something slightly larger than a postage stamp!

So… first look at the antique stove’s replacement? I wish the lighting were better. I really do! This was a rainy/snowy winter day and I needed the lights on, which makes the photos not as pretty as they could be. I’m not planning a full renovation of the kitchen right now, but obviously the CornuFé is a huge upgrade. I have no shortage of ideas for a full renovation that would of course utilize the new range, but I also have smaller incremental changes in mind that would add up to a perfectly lovely kitchen for years to come.

Anyway! Thanks for stopping by for the coffee walnut cookie recipe! I’d love to hear from you if you make them. And be sure to visit each person linked below for another recipe.

 
BLOG HOP COOKIE SWAP
 
• Making it Lovely
• Centered by Design
• Bria Hammel Interiors
• Place St. Russel
• Anita Yokota
• Simply Grove
• Room for Tuesday
• Francois et Moi
• Life on Virginia Street
• Boxwood Avenue
• Coco Kelley
• Erin Kestenbaum
• Kate Lester Interiors
• House of Hipsters
• Jojotastic