Eggless Coffee Walnut Cookies

       

        

                    Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.  ~Jessi Lane Adams

I LOVE, LOVE COFFEE!! I love nuts. And these two together, is one of those matches made in heaven. Like orange and dark chocolate, chocolate and nuts, coffee and cream, coffee and chocolate... ummm.. 

Baking cookies is something I very rarely do. If you have noticed, this is the second cookie in a year I am posting on this blog.  Its not that I don't love cookies, its just the thought of rolling, cutting out the dough batch by small batch, that puts me off. If you have baked cookies in a small oven you will know what I mean. I baked cookies today after a long time and delicious ones at that! Am so happy! I made some of these Eggless Coffee Walnut Cookies which I had bookmarked from Deeba's blog(That leaves just the rest of those utterly gorgeous cakes and bakes on the uber gorgeous Passionate About Baking,left to be baked:) What an inspiring thought!!.  

This recipe is a very simple and quick as it involves using butter straight out of the fridge, no creaming the butter, no rolling and cutting out cookies. And it was quite easy to make, the results... yuu..mmm...If you are someone (like me) who shies away from baking cookies for the effort involved or need a quick to put-together batch of nutty, coffee rich, aroma filled cookies, this is just the recipe for you. Thanks so much Deeba for this lovely keeper of a recipe.

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This recipe is from PAB, original recipe from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. This book supposedly has simple, but sensational desserts,  added to my growing wish list of baking books.

Please refer my recent update below

Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour – 2 cups

Walnuts – 1 cup (roughly chopped)

Sugar – 3/4 cups

Salt – 1/4 tsp (I skipped this)

Unsalted butter – 3/4 cup ( 170 grams) / chilled and roughly cut up

Instant coffee- 3 teaspoons (Divided use, original recipe has fresh ground coffee beans)

Coffee Essence – 1 tsp (You can get this at Nilgiris)
Vanilla Essence - 1/2 teaspoon

Milk- 1.5 teaspoons (I added this, as the dough was very crumbly, use only if needed) 

Coffee beans – 40-50 to put on top. 

Procedure

• Put the walnuts, flour, sugar and salt if using, in the bowl of a food processor and pulse till the walnuts are finely ground. I did this in parts in my small mixie jar as I do not have a food processor. 
• Pulse again with 2 teaspoons of coffee till well blended. (I have taken the entire flour mixture in large bowl and continued the procedure with my hand mixer). 
• Add chilled butter and pulse again till breadcrumb like mixture forms
• Add the coffee extract and vanilla essence; pulse just until the dough begins to form lumps around the blade. I have used my hand mixer on medium high speed, pushing the dough together till it roughly came together.(A food processor I am sure, can anytime do a better job here)
• Take out the mixture; pull together to form a dough; knead briefly to make it smooth. The dough in itself is quite tasty, resist the temptation to eat it as is and carry on with the rest of the procedure:-))
• Roll into logs (I made 4 small round logs) wrap in cling wrap and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight.

•  Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C / 375 degrees F.
• You will need 2-3 un-greased cookie trays.(the dough has quite a lot of butter and oil from the walnuts, so the release will not be a problem) I have used my largest rectangular cake tin, reused it.
• Take logs out , slice 1/4″ apart. Push a coffee bean firmly in the center of each cookie. Roll the edges of a few in the remaining coffee if you wish. (If your cookies do not get a good round shape when sliced like the one on the bottom, extreme right, just shape it holding it gently but firmly and shape it against your palm)
• Place the cookies slightly apart as they will expand a little as they bake.

Bake for about 10 minutes till the cookies are light brown in color. Your house will now be smelling gorgeous, filled with the aroma of coffee and butter. So, the cookies may get you sudden visiting neighbors;-)

The baking time may vary slightly depending on the thickness of the cookies, so try to keep the cookies size uniform and keep watching closely for the first batch. The cookies will feel slightly soft (but not too soft) when they are done. They will continue to cook and harden slightly on the cookie tray when removed form the oven, so take care not to over bake or they will become too hard.

• Once the cookies are done, remove the tray from the oven, allow the cookies to cool on the tray for a couple of minutes. Once cool, gently remove from the tray.
• Cool completely on cookie racks. Store in airtight tins.

  
  

  If you want a milder coffee flavor, use 2 teaspoons coffee and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. 
  
  
  

  
  

These cookies are supposed to stay good for a month (if you do not add milk). Well, we may not be able to test this at all as its highly unlikely that these cookies will remain uneaten for so long:-)).

These cookies are being sent to Champa's Bake-Off

Update: On 18th July 2011

I have made these twice more. The first time I made these, I did not have weighing scales. The butter was probably less, hence, I have had to use a bit of milk to get the dough workable. If you weigh the butter, there is absolutely no need for milk. The flour is measured by spooning the flour lightly into the cup and leveling with an offset spatula.

Since the flour was more (as compared to the butter) the first time I baked these, it took just 10 minutes to bake. The next 2 times, the cookies took about 17-18 minutes per batch. So when the ingredients are accurately measured, the baking time is 17-18 minutes. But please do bake a test batch to make sure.

Use about 2 1/2 tsp instant coffee in the dough if not using coffee essence. If you add more than this, the cookies will taste bitter and you may need to add more sugar, about 2 tablespoons. While using the instant coffee and essence, add all of it at one go when you are mixing the dough. If you try to add later, it may not get well mixed in the dough. Avoid over-mixing or over handling the dough, use less pressure for lighter cookies.

However you measure or bake, the cookies will turn out just fantastic, so don't let this be a cause for concern:-)