Coffee Chocolate Chip Shorties

Gluten-free 

I love a good shortbread cookie. They aren’t as sweet and have such a soft, crumbly texture. Another reason why I love them: they’re so easy to make. It is the perfect cookies to make around the holiday season because they are so easy to make ahead of time, keep in the fridge or freezer until you need them. 

Let’s talk chocolate 

I really recommend using a good dark chocolate for these cookies. I use Taza Chocolate’s Seriously Dark bar that I chop up. I love chopping my chocolate chunks from a bar or hunk of chocolate. You get little pieces, big pieces and some for snacking, of course. 

If you want to go really big, try chopping up a good toffee bar and throwing them in there. Or, my personal favorite: peanut butter cups. The possibilities really are endless

Coffee Buzz

I love coffee so really I would be happy adding it to anything. In these cookies, it adds a great roasted flavor, which pairs oh so well with the dark chocolate. I would use a very finely ground coffee. If you have an automatic drip coffee maker and have ground coffee, that coffee is perfect for this recipe. 

Sometimes, if you want to give a really big coffee boost, I use coffee extract in addition to the vanilla extract. I bought it on a whim at Sur la Table (where I spend way too much of my time). It is not exactly like the flavor of real ground coffee, but as with the grounds, it provides that rich, roasted flavor. 

Recipe

9 tbsps salted butter or dairy-free butter, cut into cubes 

1/4 cup coconut sugar

2 tbsps cane sugar

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp gluten-free vanilla extract

1 tbsp finely ground coffee

1 1/4 cups gluten-free measure-for-measure flour

1/3-1/2 cup chopped chocolate 

Get a longish piece of plastic wrap ready; this dough needs to chill before baking. 

I recommend chopping your chocolate, whether you’re using chips or a whole bar,. Just give them a chop so you end up with little chards along with some chunks, set aside. 

Whisk together the flour and the coffee and set aside. 

In the bowl of a stand mixer, place the cubed butter, coconut sugar, cane sugar vanilla and salt. With the paddle attachment, beat until lighter in color and a little fluffy. You don’t want to see any big chunks of butter. It takes about 4 minutes. Scrape down the sides of bowl. 

Add half of the flour to the butter mixture and beat on low until most of the flour is absorbed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the remaining flour mixture and beat again on low. 

Once most of the flour is absorbed again, add the chopped chocolate and increase the speed of the mixer slightly until all the flour is absorbed. Since this is gluten-free, no need to worry about over-mixing. You want to keep mixing until all bottom of the bowl is clean-ish. 

Using your hands, collect the dough, kneading it together on the sides of the bowl, picking up any additional bits of flour or pistachio that didn’t get mixed in. Transfer the dough to the ready plastic wrap. 

As you did with play-doh when you were younger, form the dough into a long, thin log of dough. I like mine to be about the side of half-dollar coin. Once shaped, wrap the dough tightly in the plastic and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. 

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350F and line a cookie sheet with parchment. Unwrap your dough and, using a sharp knife, slice 1/4 inch thick slices of cookie dough. Place the rounds on your cookie sheet, leaving about an inch and a half between each cookie. 

Top each cookie with sea salt and bake for 12 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes. These are delicious with quince paste, cranberry jam or a dairy-free cheese. 

Note: I highly recommend using a stand mixer for these. You can use a hand mixer, but it will take longer and get a little messier.