Hello everyone! This is a recipe for one of my personal favorite cookie recipes; espresso cookies with dark chocolate chips! These are the perfect treat to go with a cup of coffee, tea, milk or just by themselves.

These cookies use brown butter, an amazing ingredient that improves almost any cookie recipe. It also uses mostly brown sugar, as well as dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet to better compliment the coffee flavor.

This recipe uses espresso powder, also known as instant espresso or instant espresso powder. If you’ve never used it before, I highly recommend trying it out for not only coffee-flavored recipes, but any chocolate recipe in general. Cakes, cookies, muffins, sauces, frostings, brownies, you name it. It doesn’t make chocolate things taste like coffee unless you add a lot of it, it just enhances the chocolate flavor.

Also, there’s a variety of chocolates you can use for this one. Whether you prefer milk or super dark, any kind will work! Do be warned though, if you use a chopped bar the cookies will spread more (unless you use ring molds) and the chocolate will be liquid when the cookies are warm.

When I was first coming up with this recipe I thought, what would are the best flavors to go with dark chocolate chips? And this is definitely one of them. The strong flavor of the espresso and the richness of the chocolate chips balance each other out, making these cookies not too sweet or strong.

If you prefer a lighter coffee taste, go with 3 tbsp. They will still taste like espresso cookies, but with a focus on the “mocha” aspect of them. With 4 tbsp (1/4 cup) they will be more coffee-forward, with the chocolate being more of an additional flavor as opposed to creating a mocha taste.

Browned Butter

Browning butter is when you heat butter past melted, to the point that the milk solids begin to brown. To do this, I would melt the butter in a saucepot over medium-low heat, whisking frequently. Keep a close eye on it, because it will go through a few stages pretty quickly. Often it will start out bubbling, then it will begin foaming, and finally it will settle down a bit and the solids will begin to brown very quickly.

During the foaming stage, I usually turn my heat to almost the lowest it can go, and whisk constantly to keep it from overflowing. Once the milk solids are golden brown, immediately remove from the heat and pour into a heat-safe bowl, and make sure to use a spatula to scrape the bottom of the pot. Let it cool to room temperature, about 25-40 minutes depending on how hot/cold it is in your house.

Espresso Powder

The staple flavor of these cookies, you can use between 3 and 4 tablespoons to achieve a delicious coffee flavor without it getting overpowering. If you don’t have espresso powder, you can use instant coffee crystals instead. Just dissolve them in the brown butter while it is still warm, then make the recipe as usual.

Dark Chocolate

As stated above, this is not required. You can use any kind of chocolate (milk, semi-sweet, bitter-sweet, white), but my personal favorite is dark chocolate chips. They go well with the strong, dark flavor of the espresso and have just enough sweetness to balance it out. I wouldn’t go any lower than 55% cocoa unless you like a very dark/slightly bitter flavor.