White chocolate pistachio cookies — delightfully sweet and salty in one delicious bite! Get ready to meet your new favourite cookie.
(Love white chocolate? Start the day with Raspberry White Chocolate Overnight Oats, have some White Chocolate Blackberry Muffins this afternoon or treat yourself to No-Bake Raspberry White Chocolate Tart this weekend!)
Welcome to March everyone! We made it through the worst of winter (quick, knock on wood with me!) so I think we all deserve a little reward. In the form of cookies. Lots of them.
These white chocolate chip pistachio cookies are delightfully sweet (but not too sweet), salty (but not too salty), and chewy (fantastic attribute in a cookie IMO). They are an awesome way to bid adieu to the cold and say hello to warmth and sunshine.
How to make (with photos)
These cookies are quick and easy to whip up too.
1. COMBINE DRY INGREDIENTS. First you want to whisk all your dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
2. CREAM BUTTER AND SUGAR. Then using a handheld electric mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter, granulated sugar and demerara sugar until light and fluffy.
3. ADD EGG AND VANILLA. Stir in egg and vanilla extract and continue beating until they’re both incorporated.
4. ADD DRY INGREDIENTS. Switch your mixer to low speed and add your flour mixture a little at a time and stir until combined.
5. ADD GOODIES. Fold white chocolate chips and pistachios. The batter will be very sticky and that’s okay.
6. CHILL COOKIE DOUGH. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for an hour.
7. SCOOP DOUGH INTO PAN. When you’re ready, preheat oven to 375F and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Scoop a tablespoon of batter into your pan and make sure to space them properly, about 2 inches apart. Do not flatten.
8. BAKE, COOL AND ENJOY! Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes or until the edges start to turn a light golden brown. Do not over bake. Cool in pans for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. This recipe yields 24-30 cookies.
Ingredients
To make pistachio cookies, you’ll need:
- All purpose flour
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Unsalted butter
- Granulated sugar
- Demerara sugar – you can also use light brown sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla extract
- White chocolate chips
- Shelled salted pistachios
Baking tools
When baking cookies, I usually use my stand-mixer but a handheld electric mixer works too.
My favourite tools include:
- Nordicware natural aluminum baking sheets
. Because I own a couple of big ones, I can bake big batches of cookies in one go (using the convection setting in our oven so the heat is distributed evenly). I also have a few dark coloured baking pans that’s useful when I’m baking a small batch. - OXO 1.5 tbsp cookie scoop. It helps me make equally sized cookies and it’s great for ice cream too!
- Digital kitchen scale. Ours is very old and is not available anymore but any kitchen scale will do. Trust me, it will improve your baking tenfold.
- Oven thermometer. I never bake without an oven thermometer hanging in my oven. Those little gadgets are lifesavers.
. Because I own a couple of big ones, I can bake big batches of cookies in one go (using the convection setting in our oven so the heat is distributed evenly). I also have a few dark coloured baking pans that’s useful when I’m baking a small batch.
. It helps me make equally sized cookies and it’s great for ice cream too!
. Ours is very old and is not available anymore but any kitchen scale will do. Trust me, it will improve your baking tenfold.
. I never bake without an oven thermometer hanging in my oven. Those little gadgets are lifesavers.Recipe FAQs
Here are more tips and tidbits to help make baking these cookies a breeze.
Chocolate purists scoff at white chocolate. I don’t blame them. White chocolate is not chocolate at all; it doesn’t contain chocolate solids (or cocoa powder).
What it’s made of is a blend of cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, milk fat and lecithin — a fatty emulsifier that holds it all together.
For me (and I guess other white chocolate fans??) well, potato, po-tah-toh. It tastes good!
You do need to be a careful when buying white chocolate though because not all white chocolate are made the same.
There are basically two kinds – the good, high-quality white chocolate, typically used for melting and drizzling, and the regular white chocolate chips, what I used here.
I usually spring for the “good” white chocolate
if I know the white chocolate will be the star of the show (for this homemade chocolate bark, for example). For cookies like this, white chocolate chips
do just fine.
Here’s a really interesting white chocolate test folks over at Cook’s Illustrated did.
I know white chocolate and macadamia nuts are the default white chocolate cookie combination. And in fact that was my original plan.
I have this cookbook (one of my favourite ones) – Guittard Chocolate Cookbook
– that had a recipe for it but I just could not bring myself to buy macadamia nuts because they’re ridiculously expensive in these parts.
We did have a whole bag of pistachios
though. And I do love experimenting. I have to say this was a very delicious one!
I also switched up the kind of sugar used. Demerara
has a natural toffee, caramel-y flavor which gives warm, caramel notes to baked goods. And I also find it less sweet than brown sugar, which was what the original recipe called for.
Demerara worked wonderfully here. It resulted to a cookie that has a hint of caramel without the overwhelming sweetness caramel is sometimes known for.
(Speaking of caramel, have you tried my Salted Caramel Sauce? Delicious! Perfect for cakes and cupcakes and ice cream and just, you know, eating with a spoon.)
I go into more detail about chilling cooking dough when I shared my recipe for Soft and Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies.
For this particular recipe though, I always chill the batter before baking to help minimize spreading and to help the cookies keep their shape.
You have two options here (well, three if you’re not really a chilled-batter kind of baker, which is perfectly fine too).
One, you can roll the batter into balls, place them on your cookie sheet then chill the whole sheet before baking.
If you don’t have fridge space there’s option two: chill the batter, roll them into balls then bake (I prefer option 2 – I roll them while I’m preheating my oven).
Option 2 requires some strength and stamina as the batter gets tough (don’t worry, it’s a nice kind of tough); I just like to think of it as the calories I burn now so I can eat 2 cookies later (The Cookie Workout, you saw it here first!).
You can store these cookies in an airtight container on the counter and they will last up to 5 days.
To keep them chewy, try putting a piece of white bread in your cookie jar. The cookies absorb the moisture from the bread, helping keep them chewy longer.
Deliciously sweet and salty
I love how these cookies turn out. Sweet and delicate white chocolate, touch of caramel, salty pistachios. They are so easy to make too!
So let’s bake a batch of white chocolate chip pistachio cookies and start counting down to spring!
More recipes to celebrate the arrival of spring
Here are more recipes to welcome warmth and sunshine back into our lives:
- Cold, refreshing and bursting with the wonderful flavours of fresh strawberries, this strawberry cheesecake mousse is delicious with minimal effort required!
- Rhubarb chia pudding is such a refreshing spring and summer treat. Sweet and tart, light but filling, delicious. It’s so easy to make too.
- Lemon sweet rolls are one of my favourite breakfast treats – buttery, lemony bread rolls glazed with a scrumptiously lemony glaze.
- Blackberry lavender ice cream is wonderfully floral, subtly purple, absolutely refreshing. You don’t even have to have an ice cream machine to make it at home.
White Chocolate Chip Pistachio Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ cup unsalted butter room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup demerara sugar packed
- 1 pc large egg room temperature
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 3.5 oz white chocolate chips
- 3.5 oz shelled salted pistachios roughly chopped
Instructions
- Combine 1 ½ cups flour, ½ teaspoon baking soda and ½ teaspoon salt in a medium sized bowl and set aside.
- Using a handheld electric mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream ½ cup butter, ½ cup granulated sugar and ½ cup demerara sugar until light and smooth (2-3 minutes on medium high speed).
- Add the egg and ½ teaspoon vanilla and continue beating until incorporated.
- Switch to low speed and add your flour mixture a little at a time and stir until combined.
- Fold white chocolate chips and pistachios. The batter will be very sticky.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for an hour.
- Preheat oven to 375F and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Scoop a tablespoon of batter into your pan and make sure to space them properly, about 2 inches apart. Do not flatten.
- Bake 8-10 minutes or until the edges start to turn a light golden brown. Do not over bake.
- Cool in pans for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. This recipe yields 24-30 cookies.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information are estimates only.
Happy baking!
Did you make white chocolate pistachio cookies? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
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Denise
This look awesome! I just discover Guittard’s cocoa rouge so I’m anxious to buy their chocolate book. I have a lot to learn about chocolate. Love the white chocolate, caramel, pistachio combination too!
Jolina
Hope you get a copy soon. They have yummy recipes!
Veena Azmanov
I just love the combination of white chocolate and pistachio in this cookie!
Gloria
Love the combination of flavours in these cookies. I would love one right now with my afternoon coffee. There is something about pistachios that make things so pretty (that green colour) and delicious. I would have a hard time eating just one.
Kristi
Hi there, if you chose to use the original brown sugar, what would the measurement be? Still .5 cup? thanks so much!
Jolina
Hi Kristi. Use 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar (110 grams). Enjoy!
Kimberly
These are calling my name! I love pistachios. Love your photos too!
Emily
This is a new cookie recipe for me to try! I have never had this before but the combination sounds so good!