Every Tuesday night I play mah jongg with a group of women. It’s a four person game; there are 5 of us and every four turns we sit out a game. Some weeks I bring one of my myriad of cooking magazines with me to thumb through. This past December while thumbing through Bon Appetit, I came across this recipe for pistachio thumbprint cookies, and immediately showed it to my friend Carol, who loves pistachios.
Everyone ooh’ed over the photo, and it went into my mental “make – this” file. Fast forward, and my friend Shoshi, who is Carol’s daughter, had just given birth to a baby boy and I helped bake sweets for the bris. You better believe this was one of the first cookies on the list!
When I started reading through the recipe, a couple of issues popped out. While I have fresh vanilla beans and enjoy using them, I didn’t want to put two into a pistachio recipe. I didn’t like the fact that there was no pistachio in the dough, and couldn’t figure out why you’d only coat half the ball in chopped pistachios. I decided it needed to be improved.
I made two main changes, although one made all the difference. I eliminated the vanilla beans and swapped out 1/3 of the flour for ground pistachios. The ground pistachios give the cookies a lovely color and a delicate flavor.
In fact, the cookie would be lovely just on it’s own, although if you decide to make them as a simple cookie, reduce the cardamom by half, as it almost overwhelms the delicate pistachio flavor. With the full cookie treatment, however, the cardamom isn’t noticeable as a distinct flavor, but helps to round out the pistachio flavor.
The dough was loose, so I refrigerated it before scooping. However, I found that the pistachios adhered better when the dough started to warm up, so for the next batch I added a little extra flour and scooped the cookies straight away, which worked better.
I followed the instructions to make my own pistachio paste, which looked very greasy and didn’t really come together by itself. I decided to add the butter and see if that helped smooth it out. Well, disaster!
It turned into a greasy mess and left me really worried I’d just wasted a bunch of pistachios. In desperation, I stuck the whole processor container in the fridge and left it until it got really cold. I pulled it out and reattached it to the base, and gave it a whirl. Miraculously, it all came together in a beautifully smooth and tasty spread. Thank goodness!
The cookies are baked halfway through, then a teaspoon is pressed into the cookie to make the indent, and the pistachio paste is piped into the indent. I found my round-shaped teaspoon worked great, but any similar tool would work fine. A simple pastry bag (or a ziplock) with the corner snipped off is the perfect easy way to fill the indent. Then back into the oven for the final baking, and then the struggle to keep them out of my mouth until they cooled down sufficiently!
Ingredients
Cookie:
- 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2-1/4 cups raw pistachios (see note)
- 3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (see note)
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 cup honey
Pistachio paste:
- 1 cup raw pistachios (see note)
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup, 1 stick) unsalted butter (see note)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 3500F.
- Place the 2-1/4 cups raw pistachios in a food processor, and pulse until they are chopped to a medium-small consistency. Note that the smaller the pieces, the better they will stay adhered to the cookie. Take the chopped pistachios out of the food processor, and put them into a mesh strainer, to separate the ground pistachios from the chopped pistachios. Measure the ground pistachios, and add chopped pistachios if necessary to get to 1-1/4 cups ground pistachios. You will have about 1-1/4 cups chopped pistachios remaining. Place the chopped pistachios in a small bowl and set aside.
- Place the 1-1/4 cups ground pistachios back in the food processor, and add 1/2 cup flour. Process until the pistachios are ground to a flour consistency. Move the pistachio flour to a bowl, and add the remaining flour, cardamom, and salt to the bowl.
- Now make the pistachio paste: place the raw pistachios in a food processor and process until ground. Add the honey and oil, and process until as smooth as possible, or until it doesn’t seem to be getting any smoother. If your paste looks oily, don’t worry. Add the butter and process until fully combined. If it looks oily and broke, place the processor container into the fridge until mixture is cold and firm. Put the container back on the processor, and pulse until smooth and uniform. Put pistachio paste in a container; leave at room temp unless it's very warm, then refrigerate for a bit. The paste will harden if left in the refrigerator, making it difficult to pipe into the cookies. Make sure to scrape the container well, but no need clean it.
- In the food processor, place the butter and granulated sugar and process until it is creamed, light, and fluffy. Add the egg and honey, and pulse to fully combine. Add the flour mixture to the processor, and pulse just until fully combined.
- Scoop the dough out using a #60 scoop, and roll each ball in the bowl of chopped pistachios. Roll the coated balls lightly in your hands, which helps the pistachios to adhere and any loose pistachios will fall off. Place the coated balls on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies for about 6 minutes, or just until they start to turn light brown. Remove the sheet from oven. Using a teaspoon, scoop, or other rounded tool, make a deep indent in the middle of each cookie, about three-quarters of the way down through the cookie.
- Place the pistachio paste into a piping bag or ziplock bag, and cut a small hole in the corner. Pipe the pistachio paste mixture into the indentation in the cookie, and repeat until all cookies have been filled.
- Place the cookies back into the oven, and bake another 6 to 10 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from oven, and let cool on baking sheet until firm enough that they can be moved.
- Note: You will need 1-1/2 pounds of raw pistachios for this recipe. Raw pistachios can be purchased at Trader Joe’s. I have not tested this recipe with roasted pistachios so don't know how it would change the flavor. Pistachio paste can be made ahead and stored in the refrigerator. Butter can be used either cold or at room temperature, the food processor makes it work either way.