Brown Butter, Pistachio and Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies.
Right now the way to my heart is chocolate pistachio shortbread.
Look at those melty puddles! That flaky salt! Those crunchy pistachios!
I mentioned this at the start of the season but after sharing approximately a billion cookies when I first started blogging, the last few years have been rather… light.
But I’ve gone all in this year.
The cashew butter buckeyes I made earlier this month were amazing. The lemon crinkle cookies? Eeep! You guys are freaking over them and so am I. But there was one more cookie that we made a few months ago to shoot for the box that didn’t make it on to the blog yet… and that is this amazing chocolate pistachio shortbread.
My my my, let me count the ways that I love you pistachio!
I’m a pistachio nut, every pun intended.
I’ve made pistachio oatmeal, pistachio pesto, pistachio kale salad, pistachio cake and even pistachio coffee in The Pretty Dish. That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Just a wee bit obsessed.
Never did I ever care about shortbread until I made Alison Roman’s chocolate chunk shortbread back in January of this year. They were all over Instagram and some said they were overrated, but I fell.in.love.
Hard.
I really ended up enjoying them! They will never take the place of a traditional chocolate chip cookie for me, but they now have their own place in my heart. AKA… my cookie box!
These chocolate pistachio shortbread cookies are sort of like those, but with roasted and salted nuts. The depth of flavor here is insane.
And. And! We BROWNED THE BUTTER!
Yes, we browned the butter first and then chilled it before mixing. So so so good. Lots of sweet and savory going on, which gets my palate all sorts of excited.
These cookies can be a little high maintenance, especially if you decide to brown the butter. But the rest time is definitely hands-off time, so they are great to start one night and finish the next day.
And the other fantastic news is that since they are a shortbread, and since no one expects a shortbread to be soft or chewy or fluffy, these last a long time! They hold up well over a few days (like a week or so!) without seeming stale.
Grab a cappuccino and dip this in. You’re in heaven!
Chocolate Pistachio Shortbread
Chocolate Pistachio Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- ½ cup loosely packed brown sugar
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 5 ounces high-quality dark chocolate, chopped
- 1/3 cup roasted, salted pistachios, chopped
- flaked sea salt, for sprinkling
Instructions
- First step, brown the butter! This isn’t a necessary step and it does add extra time, but it makes the cookies so super delicious and flavorful! To brown the butter, add the butter to a large skillet over medium heat. Let it melt and start to bubble. You want it to bubble (and you can occasionally whisk it) until you start to see brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Whisk it well then remove it from the heat. Pour the butter in a bowl and place it in the fridge to get cold. Ideally, you can do this the night before! It will need anywhere from an hour to 3 to 4 to fully harden.
- To make the cookies, add the cold butter to a stand mixer and beat on medium speed. Beat in the brown sugar and granulated sugar and beat on medium speed until combined, about 3 to 4 minutes. Beat in the vanilla extract until combined.
- Beat in the flour until it is just combined. Beat in the dark chocolate and chopped pistachios.
- Remove the dough from the bowl and separate it into two pieces. Roll each piece in a log that is about 2 inches thick. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- After two hours, unroll the log and slice it into ½-inch slices. Slice down gently and if the nuts and chunks break the dough apart, you can push the pieces back together. You want rounds on the baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
- Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, until they are slightly golden. Remove and sprinkle with a pinch of flaked salt. Let cool completely then serve!
Did you make this recipe?
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Ready to build a house inside that cookie.
40 Comments on “Brown Butter, Pistachio and Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies.”
I actually thought of you yesterday while doing ballet, because I was wearing my PISTACHIO Alo Yoga leggings, hahaha. And those cookies? Pistachio-displaying done right.
The formula you shared helped me a lot in processing this dish. Thanks :)
These look pretty tasty I would love to try them out.
WOW these shortbread cookies look amazing! I love chocolate and pistachio together!
These look great! I also prefer Alison Roman’s recipe with brown butter (the base recipe is great, but the brown butter is INCREDIBLE), but I found you need to add two tablespoons (about one tablespoon per stick) of water to the butter/sugar mixture to compensate for the water loss of browning the butter. Otherwise the texture is a little too sandy. Still delicious, but not ideal. Adding the water back in fixes that right up!
Yes, agree with dani. My dough was much too dry to shape into a log. I’ve added a bit of water. Hoping they won’t just crumble after the two hour wait 🤞. Hoping they work because they sound amazzzzing!!!!!!
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UGHHH these look SO DELICIOUS!!! I hate having celiac disease! Hopefully these could work with a gluten free flour blend because GAH. Love your recipes so much even if sometimes they are just eye candy for me ;-)
Not this recipe, but I HAVE made gluten free shortbread with rice flour and also with gluten-free oat flour. I am sure it would work well with any gluten-free flour, though the garbanzo based ones have their own odd flavor and I wouldn’t use that in a cookie. Let us know how it goes. I’ll also give it a try eventually. Best wishes!
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How do you bear the butter when it’s cold/hard? Do I need to take it out of the fridge for a few hours prior to beating it and mixing it with sugar?
Holy cow these are AMAZING! I don’t have flake salt so I put about 3/4 tsp kosher salt in the dough which was awesome. Can’t believe I’m saying this but next time I might do a bit less chocolate and a bit more pistachio. I rolled my logs too thin so got lots more cookies, lol such problems!
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These look so delicious.
Cookies tasted good, but were too “sandy”. They fell apart when I tried to pick them up to eat. Would like to perfect them if you have a suggestion of how to make them sturdier.
Hi! Love the smell of the browned butter :) I made these last night and just baked them up but it looks like they didn’t stay to shape and have spread. What did I do wrong? I did add 2 tablespoon of water to the mixture as suggested on the comments. I would love to perfect these!
Did you chill them in the fridge before hand? My were really cold when I baked them.
Hello! I made the dough for these cookies tonight! Although I’m very excited to try them… my dough was so crumbly and dry. Is this correct? I’m worried once the dough chills they will completely fall apart before I can bake them! Looking for some help! Thanks!
I made these and they were fantastic. I added a table spoon of water to make up for the water loss from the browned butter. I also added the salt to the top before the bake rather than after.
Very nice article. Thanks for sharing.
Team Printo
I love these so much! I made them with vegan butter and they were amazing (I also forgot to refridgerate the dough but they still turned out fine) the dough is also edible/safe which is a huge plus
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I tried to make these today, but they were so crumbly/sandy that I could hardly roll them into a log. After chilling them, I tried to cut the slices only to have them all completely crumble apart. Maybe I should have tried adding some water like other reviewers mentioned. I’m still going to bake all the crumbled cookie dough anyways and use it as a topping for ice cream since they still taste yummy.
These cookies tasted very good, but I had the same issue as a lot of other commenters–the dough is just too crumbly and didn’t quite hold together! I got maybe 3 round cookies out of the whole batch, with the rest in various degrees of crumbliness on the pan. (This didn’t affect the flavor, but, ya know. Presentation matters!)
I will certainly add a bit of water next time and trust my instincts till it is the proper consistency, but I think perhaps a note to guide people toward this would be very useful in the recipe.
After seeing the video tutorial in your IG Stories, I realized, too, that when I brown butter I take it much further than you did for this recipe, which would result in your butter retaining more water content than mine did (this would of course result in my dough being more crumbly!). That said, butter goes from barely brown to toasty in a flash, so the recipe would really benefit from some “here’s options for achieving the right consistency if these exact ingredients don’t behave in the same way in your kitchen”–those kinds of instructions are so helpful to experienced cooks and novices alike!
Do you have the metric measurements for this recipe? Looks amazing and am dying to try!
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These cookies have delicious flavor, but I too found them a bit sandy, almost like the brown sugar wasn’t incorporated. I added a couple of tablespoons of room temperature butter when I was mixing the cookies and they held together enough to form and slice without crumbling.
Thankfully I read the comments. I doubled the recipe and added 4 T of water and the logs came out perfectly. Browning the butter was a new experience for me. Right after the butter gets really foamy it turns brown and you’re done. It takes about 5 minutes. I would recommend letting the browned butter sit out 10 minutes to soften as it combines a lot better.
I love this recipe. I love to cook but not bake. Made them once. Here are my recommendations:
1. Add orange zest
2. Don’t put in logs. Use cookie scoop and then press down
I made these and wish I read the comments below first, you definitely need to add some liquid. My cookies came our very crumbly.
Great and interesting article.Thank you for sharing.
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These are beyond amazing!
Delicious recipe, browning the butter takes that extra love and effort that makes these cookies to die for. I doubled the pistachio and did 3 oz milk chocolate & 3 oz dark chocolate for a little twist.
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I know this recipe post is 5-ish years old, but I just found it and feel such regret. Oh! the shortbreads I would have consumed, if only I’d known. DO brown the butter – it adds such amazing richness. I love to bake and always taste what I’ve made, but usually I can leave the goods to my husband and son. Not this time.
SO delicious, loved them….but, rolling them into a log, cooling then cutting was difficult. Trying to cut them completely failed for me. Crumbly mess and I basically had to cut them and pick up the pieces and mold the again with the warmth from my hands. Next time I make these (which I for sure will make again) I would cut the dough first into the shape I need and then place them in the fridge to cool before the oven. Really delicious recipe none the less :)
These are fantastic, though there are a couple of things I plan to do differently next time.
First, as others have mentioned, the temp you brown the butter at and how much moisture is left significantly impacts the consistency of the dough. I was tipped off when I read that the recipe said to “separate it” (the dough) – mine wasn’t yet an “it”, it was still a bowl of sand. Three tablespoons of water fixed the problem completely and I was happy with the end consistency.
Second, I wish I had sifted the chopped chocolate before putting it in the dough. The fine dust at the bottom of my pile of chocolate from the chopping (even though it was only a rough chop) was enough to tint the dough. It’s purely an appearance thing, but I would have preferred the cookie to have that lighter colored shortbread look that shows off the contrasting colors of the chocolate and the pistachios better.
Definitely a sophisticated flavor combination that straddles sweet and savory. I’ll be making them again (maybe with some dried cherries next time?)
Good recipe