I’m a coffee fiend…always have been. In high school, my bestie and I would smuggle flavored coffee creamer into Perkins or Country Kitchen and sit there for HOURS drinking pots of coffee late into the night. These days, I’ve switched to decaf (and even that I can’t drink after 4pm if I want to sleep at night…gotta love getting older), but I still can’t live without the taste and smell of coffee. And it shows in my baking—whenever I think about what recipe to create next, I almost always gravitate to coffee or chocolate (or both). What can I say…I know what I like! Case in point: these Espresso White Chocolate Chip Cookies.

A White Chocolate Mocha in Cookie Form

When I go out for coffee, I don’t often get fancy coffee drinks (I typically go for a decaf Americano, no cream or sugar, just black). But when I do, one of the things I especially enjoy is a white chocolate mocha. I know, I know, they’re incredibly sweet. But every once in a while they make for a delicious treat—sweet, creamy coffee…it’s a lot like a cup of melted coffee ice cream.

Anyway, that was the inspiration for these cookies. I wanted to make something creamy and sweet (but not too sweet), with big coffee flavor. All wrapped up into a chocolate chip cookie.

Triple the Coffee, Triple the Flavor

To get that big coffee flavor, I included THREE types of coffee in these cookies: ground coffee beans, cold brewed espresso, and instant espresso powder.

For the ground coffee, you want to use a dark roast of some kind—french roast, espresso, or something similar. Make sure it’s ground nice and fine, so you don’t end up with big chewy bits of coffee grounds in your cookies.
For the espresso, you can brew your own at home if you have an espresso brewer. If not, cold press coffee works well too. If you don’t have either of those, just brew some really strong dark roast coffee. Whichever way you do it, make sure your espresso or coffee is chilled before you add it to the cookies.
For the espresso powder, any type of instant espresso or instant dark roast coffee will work. I used Medaglia D’Oro instant espresso. I found it at my local grocery store, but you can also buy it online.

Brown Butter Makes It Better

White chocolate is notoriously sweet, and can sometimes be kind of cloying. All of that coffee certainly helps keep these cookies from getting sickly sweet, but I thought they needed a little more help in that department. Enter: brown butter.

Brown butter, in case you’re not familiar, is made by heating butter in a saucepan until the butter solids brown, giving it a deliciously complex nutty flavor. It adds a little more time to your prep, but boy is it worth it! This liquid gold makes everything taste amazing—roasted veggies, seafood, frostings, and, of course, cookies.

I have a whole post on how to make brown butter: click here to check it out!

Most bakers will tell you to never use salted butter for brown butter…but I love using salted butter! It gets even saltier when you brown it, and that blends perfectly with the sweetness of the white chocolate. But feel free to use unsalted if you prefer.

And if you fall in love with brown butter like I have, try it in these recipes!

Tips for Making Your Best Espresso White Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies aren’t complicated, but there are a few things that will help make sure yours will turn out great.

The #1 thing that will ensure your cookies turn out just right is to chill your cookie dough. I know, it’s a pain…you want cookies NOW! I get it, I do. But trust me when I say that chilling the dough before baking makes a WORLD of difference in the flavor (and in their shape…they spread out less). Chill your dough for at least half an hour, but preferably a couple of hours or overnight.
For perfectly round cookies, use a cookie scoop (I like this one from Oxo). If they still come out of the oven a bit wonky, use a round cookie cutter that’s a bit bigger than the cookie to “scoot” the edges back into a circle. I learned this trick from the Cloudy Kitchen blog—here’s a video of Erin showing her “scooting” technique.
Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat on your cookie sheets to keep the cookies from sticking. Tip: you can re-use the parchment paper 2-3 times…or invest in some silicone baking sheets like these Silpat ones that you can reuse. They’re a bit pricey, but if you do a lot of baking they’re awfully nice to have around.
When baking these cookies, leave them a tad doughy in the middle. If you bake them until they look completely done in the center, they’ll end up being too dry. Pull them out of the oven when the edges are starting to brown and the centers are set but still a bit doughy. Then let them cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes or so before moving them to a cooling rack.

If you use these tips (and follow the recipe ;)), you’ll have a batch of beautifully delicious cookies on your hands. Give them a try, and don’t forget to tag me in your photos on Instagram!

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