Pistachio Chocolate Crisps

These cookies are the best cookies in the entire world. Really. It all started with me finding a tremendous bag of pistachios in the cupboard and Girly wanted to make sprinkle cookies. Our pantry is constantly all over the place which is shy almost all of our recipes are some form of improvisation. This is a nice way of saying I didn't have a speck of gluten free flour because I used the last of it making mediocre tea biscuits. When I could eat wheat I made kick ass tea biscuits. They were light and fluffy with just a hint of buttery goodness. Now? Little dry lumps that make me cranky. The perfect gluten-free tea biscuit is out there. I know it.

Let's forget the tea biscuits. On to the best cookies ever! I shelled approximately a million pistachios in order to have about 160 grams of finely ground nuts. I also grated a whole bar of dark chocolate with flecks of sea salt from Sugah. The babies love Sugah because well, it's a candy store with Andy Warhol dishes.

The pistachio shells mixed with bits of flying grated chocolate to make a momentous mess but it was entirely worth it. I actually do not have a picture of a baked cookie because they barely lasted.

My parents went on a cruise around the Panama Canal about a month ago and they brought back a giant bottle of vanilla. It is so rich and dark that it darkens the butter and I can barely contain myself from just eating it with a spoon.

See how the vanilla makes the butter simply caramel?

Yum.

It is really important that you get the pistachios ground very fine. Also, make sure a sneaky shell doesn't mess with anything. Shells are like that, they are kind of jerks. A tiny piece of shell can ruin it. When I ground my pistachios I ended up with a few lumps because of the fat in the nuts and the general heat put off by the coffee grinder. Don't fret, just break it up with a fork.

The Recipe:

160 g finely ground pistachios

196 g sugar

one egg

15 ml vanilla

30 g butter

one bar of dark chocolate, grated (I used this one: dark chocolate & nova scotian sea salt)

1. Cream butter with sugar and vanilla.

2. Add the egg. I always use a spatula (a blue one, in fact) to make the mix incredibly creamy. I sometimes find that eggs don't always mix well with the butter.

3. Fold in the ground pistachios.

4. Mix in the chocolate.

5. Pipe onto a cookie sheet abut 1.5 inches wide, maybe 3 inches apart? These babies will spread.

6. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

Keep an eye on them because you really don't with these cookies to brown. A gorgeous shell forms and cracks and this shell (hence the crisp name) shelters a delightfully chew centre. The consensus is that these cookies are a keeper.

I promise to take a picture of the final result next time.