Brown Butter Pistachio Popcorn Cookies

I know what you are thinking...  

"Another cookie recipe?!"

But give me a chance...   

I do not typically share the elephantine load of baked treat recipes that one might expect from a food blogger around this time of year.

There is one, very simple reason for that choice.

Most of my favorite holiday cookies really are not that dazzling.  Come Christmastime, I prefer the uncomplicated.  The unadorned, antediluvian cookies that my great-grandmother used to pack into red and green tins.  Sugar cookies as thin as parchment, Russian tea cookies thick with confectioner’s sugar and bleeding with butter, and soft peanut butter balls dipped in rich chocolate ganache - affectionately known as “buckeyes.” 

I will take all the innovation and neoclassicism you can devise come December 26th, but for now, all I want is to be drenched in edible nostalgia.

That being said, yesterday morning I woke up and decided that I wanted to throw pistachios, popcorn, and brown butter (Do I hear angels singing? Oh, no, sorry... That was just my Pandora station.) into my cookie dough. 

Never underestimate the creativity that can come from your 9am cravings. 

It’s been a couple years since I first discovered the magic of popcorn cookies.  Leave it to Deb to come up with something so unapologetically indulgent.  

I understand the skepticism, but trust me on this.  It is the new pretzels-in-your-ice-cream.

Disclaimer: This recipe will tell you to make about twice as much popcorn as you actually need for the cookies, but I do not need to tell you why, now do I?  

Have you ever browned butter before?  

Do you like things that smell wonderful and taste even better?  I know you do, of course you do!  This is why we are friends. 

Butter is heated until it is slowly bubbling, then all of our little bits of fat become toasty brown and we have something that is just about as close to heaven as we can get from these earthly kitchens of ours.

Oh, hello cookies!

These cookies are so full of crunchy, salty-sweetness, it's almost too much for a girl's heart to handle.

Almost. 

Crispy, golden edges and soft, chewy centers.  I think these cookies just may have earned themselves a place next to my great grandmother's sugar cookies. 

Christmas is next week.  Breathe in and out.  Enjoy every moment.  And try, please try, to avoid that post office if you possibly can. 

Sincerely, 

Pedantic Foodie

---

Brown Butter Pistachio Popcorn Cookies

makes roughly 18 cookies

- 1 tablespoon coconut oil

- 1/4 cup popping corn 

- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, divided (at room temperature)

- 1 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 

- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt (plus extra for salting popcorn)

- 1/4 cup brown sugar

- 1/2 cup granulated sugar 

- 1 large egg 

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 1/2 cup roasted, unsalted pistachios

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. 

Place a 4-quart saucepan over medium high heat and add coconut oil.  When the oil has melted, add popping corn and cover.  

Cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until the kernels begin to pop.  Once this begins, shake the pan vigorously over the heat until you no longer hear kernels popping. 

Remove the pan from the heat and salt the popcorn to taste.  Set aside. 

Place 1/4 cup butter in a small frying pan and place over medium heat.  Once the butter begins to bubble, watch it carefully.  The goal is for the butter to become rich topaz in color, with tiny darker bits laying on the bottom of the pan.  This should take about 5 minutes.  

Once the butter has browned, remove from heat and use a spoon to scrape off the white froth from the top of the butter.  Allow the butter to cool while you prepare the cookie batter. 

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. 

In the work bowl of your stand mixer combine remaining 1/4 cup butter with sugars.  Beat on medium speed, scraping down the sides as necessary, until the mixture is airy and well-combined. Beat in egg. 

With the mixer on low speed, slowly incorporate browned butter and vanilla extract.  

While continuing to mix, gradually add the flour mixture until all of the dry ingredients are well incorporated. 

Fold in pistachios and 1 1/2 cups popped corn. 

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and use an ice cream scoop to portion out the dough into 2 tablespoon balls. 

Bake for 9-12 minutes, until the cookies are golden brown.  The centers should still look slightly soft.  

Transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool.  Store in airtight containers until ready to serve.  Enjoy!

---

Sea Salt & Almond Chocolate Chip Cookie Peanut Butter S'mores // Summer of S'mores Pt. 5

It's Friday.  We made it.  Let's celebrate. 

I know there are a few of you out there who take issue with people like myself who like to trash up their chocolate chip cookies. 

Not only have I done that, multiple times, (see here, and here), now I have trashed up my trashed up cookies by turning them into s'mores.  You are very, very welcome. 

Are these really s'mores?  I don't know.  Probably not, considering that there's not a graham cracker in sight. 

In my defense however, the whole goal of this Summer of S'mores was simply to be inspired by the three classic flavors, and these are definitely evocative of the girl scout classic, albeit they do not meet all the technical requirements.

These salty, nut-filled cookies are giving graham crackers a run for their money in my house. 

Let's get right into this.

First we need to make the cookie dough. 

You know the drill, right?  Soft butter meets sugar and an egg before it gets cozy with the dry team - flour and baking soda. 

Now for the fun part. 

And by fun, I mean chopped almonds, chunks of milk chocolate, and sea salt. 

I love a good wrinkly cookie top. 

And I live for crispy edges. 

So, now we have cookies.  Cookies that are perfectly wonderful on their own, but are we done yet?  Of course not, because it's Friday and we need more chocolate. 

Creamy peanut butter and melted chocolate make an excellent spread for lots of things.  S'mores, toast, your fingers...  

If you have not noticed yet, I am not a graceful marshmallow-toaster.  In fact, I am much more of the light-it-on-fire-and-let-it-burn type.  I like the char, and I'm incurably impatient. 

Cookies?  Check!  Peanut butter chocolate gooeyness? Check!  Toasted (read: burnt) marshmallows?  Check! 

And we are done.  Happy Friday!

Sincerely, 

Pedantic Foodie

---

Sea Salt & Almond Chocolate Chip Cookie Peanut Butter S'mores

makes 8 s'mores or 16 cookies

for the cookies

- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

- 1/4 cup light brown sugar

- 1/2 cup granulated sugar 

- 1 large egg 

- 1 teaspoon vanilla 

- 1 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

- 1 cup milk chocolate, roughly chopped

- 3/4 cup raw, unsalted almonds 

- 2 teaspoons course sea salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 

In a large bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer for 1 minute; until fluffy.  Add sugars and beat on medium speed for 1-2 minutes, until the mixture is light in texture and the ingredients are well incorporated.  Beat in the egg and vanilla.  

With the mixture on low speed, slowly add the flour and baking soda to the butter mixture, beating until smooth and homogenous.

Fold in the chocolate, almonds, and sea salt using a rubber spatula, being careful to evenly distribute them. 

Portion the dough out into 16 cookies, using a spring-loaded cookie scoop or a large spoon.  Place the cookies on baking sheets, lined with parchment and bake on the center rack for 10 minutes.  For even baking, rotate the pan halfway through the cooking time. 

Set the cookies on cooling racks while you prepare the chocolate peanut butter spread.  The cookies do not need to be completely cooled when you assemble the s'mores, but you do not want them to be too hot, otherwise the chocolate peanut butter spread will just slide off the surface. 

for the s’mores

- 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

- 1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate, roughly chopped

- 24 marshmallows 

In a small glass bowl, combine peanut butter and chocolate.  Microwave for thirty second increments, stirring after each, until the mixture is smooth.  Allow the mixture to sit at room temperature for 15-20 minutes, until it has thickened slightly.

Spread about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the chocolate peanut butter mixture unto the bottom of eight of the cooled cookies.  Top the remaining eight cookies (top-side down) with three marshmallows and place on a baking sheet.  Set the marshmallow-topped cookies under the broiler* of your oven and broil for 1-2 minutes, until the marshmallows are soft and well-toasted.  Be sure to keep an eye on your cookies so that the bottoms do not burn!  

Press the marshmallow halves against the chocolate peanut butter-coated cookies and serve immediately.  Enjoy! 

*You could forgo the broiler altogether and use a kitchen torch to toast your marshmallows, I just find sometimes that it does not melt the marshmallows all the way through. 

---