Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! A great reason to have a drink and toast your Irish heritage – I know I’ll be having a sip or two! I was searching through my recipe archives and new posts recently for something Irish. I’ve done other Irish themed recipes on this site – Soda Bread, Corned Beef, Matcha Shortbread (a fusion experiment) etc. and I do love to bake so thought this recipe would be perfect. This cookie contains Irish Cream liqueur and coffee – need I say more?! You do need to make the dough ahead of time as it does need refrigeration. It will spread too much without chilling but as always, what a delicious predicament to have – oh my goodness!!!
I did take one or two liberties with this cookie (never done that before! 🙂) but left the bones of the recipe intact. It’s cosmetic really. I used a couple of drops of green gel food coloring and rubbed it into the white chocolate – completely optional but pretty! I wasn’t sure whether the heat of the oven would change the color or not, so I didn’t use too much – you can use more if you like. There is a lot of Irish cream liqueur in this recipe – 8 tablespoons, so if you can’t taste it, I don’t know what to say! Either you are drinking it too often or you haven’t added enough (just kidding). Now if you don’t want to use alcohol, just check the “Substitutions and/or changes” section at the end of the recipe.
If anyone questions your decision to make these cookies, just remember these cookies contain four essential food groups – alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat! And, one of my favorite toasts to you and yours – “May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you’re going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far”. Now don’t run about kissing anyone, not yet anyway! We are heading towards that goal, but we are not there yet. Wash your hands, wear a mask or two, socialize responsibly as per guidelines, get the vaccine if offered and above all, stay well! As always – enjoy!
Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 tbsp Irish Cream liqueur
2 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup cocoa powder
1 tbsp instant expresso
1 ¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 cup white chocolate chip – optional – colored green
½ cup dark chocolate chips
½ cup coarse sugar – optional
Directions
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, instant expresso, baking soda and salt, whisk to remove any lumps – set aside
In the bowl of your stand or hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar – scrape the bowl as necessary
Add the eggs one at a time, beat, then add the vanilla – beat again
Add the flour mixture and 4 tbsp of the liqueur to the butter/sugar bowl and mix on low to combine
Add in the remaining 4 tbsp of liqueur and stir
Add the chocolate chips and fold using a sturdy spatula
Refrigerate the dough for 4 or overnight
When ready to bake, heat the oven to 350f
Using a tablespoon or an ice cream scoop, add the dough to your palm and roll into balls
Dip one end of the ball in coarse sugar, place sugar side up on the baking tray and with your palm, flatten to about 1/3” – 1/2” – repeat until all the dough is used up
Bake for 12 – 15 minutes (I removed mine at 13 minutes for a lovely chewy cookie), they will continue to firm up as they cool
Suggestions and/or Changes
If you would rather not use the liqueur (drop the bottle off at my place), use the equivalent in 35% cream or maple syrup
Instead of Irish cream liqueur use Coffee liqueur, Grand Marnier or any of your favorites that will complement the coffee taste
Any nut added to this would be wonderful – ½ cup of chopped walnuts, pecans, almond slivers (you could rub these in green food coloring as well – just a couple of drops) or pistachios
You can also just leave the coffee out of the recipe if caffeine bothers you – then you can use a citrus sugar instead of plain sugar (imho, coffee should taste of coffee and not flavored)
Coarsely chop up any of the nuts above and instead of dipping in coarse sugar, dip one of the dough balls in the coarse nut mixture
Use milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate or get the matcha Kit Kat bars, chop them up and add it to this cookie one of
