Well then, I have given in to the coffee bean cookie mania too…😁
The rapidly growing interest in coffee bean cookies is slowly catching up with the cinnamon buns that all but earned the title of the lockdown bake. It makes me very happy that people are finding more time for themselves, and with it the odd extra hour to make small, tasty, sweet pleasures. ☺
I baked these cookies more than once, because they kept refusing to come out „like in the photos”. I hunted for other recipes until I finally realised that every recipe currently doing the rounds online is exactly the same – only the quantities differ slightly.
After a few failed bakes came the revelation that the secret to perfect beans is not in the recipe at all, but in the technique. That is what I want to talk about in this post.⬇
- First of all, theSINGLE MOST IMPORTANTtip is toCHILL THE DOUGH THOROUGHLY. I chilled the cookie dough twice. The first time I put it in the fridge as soon as I had kneaded it (covered with cling film, for 35 minutes). The second time was after I had shaped the beans and scored them. I arranged the beans straight onto a tray that would fit in the freezer, then kept them in the freezer for 15 minutes until fully firm. The frozen beans can then be transferred onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and goSTRAIGHTinto the oven.
- The second tip would benot to score the cookies too deeply. If the score marks are too deep, those spots can start to spread, because more hot air gets into the beans and melts the butter in the dough – which is exactly what makes the cookies slump. The optimal depth is 1/3 of the bean's diameter.
- The third tip is topreheat the oven properly. I switch the oven on fifteen minutes before I even put the beans in the freezer. A properly heated oven = even baking and less loss of shape.
The cookies come out truly wonderful – crisp on the outside, soft and buttery inside. And from experience I can tell you that 100% of the batch is gone within the first hour, so if you have a bit more time, I would recommend doubling the recipe straight away. 😂
Also, after a few batches of coffee beans, a great idea came to me – to flavour them further with chocolate, which, by the way, suits them extraordinarily well here! Which plate of cookies do you think disappeared off the table faster – with or without chocolate?🍫 The answer, I think, is obvious.
On the subject of chocolate, I would recommend using couverture chocolate (I usually buythis onefrom Lidl), because it contains a higher percentage of cocoa butter, which means it doesn't need tempering – the chocolate itself will be glossy and won't melt in your hands or at higher temperatures. If you don't have that kind of chocolate, you can temper ordinary dark chocolate; all you need is a kitchen thermometer (a simple explanation of how to temper chocolate ishere). And if you have neither couverture chocolate nor the means to temper ordinary chocolate, you can simply use plain melted chocolate — but then the dipped cookies will need a few minutes in the freezer for it to harden, and bear in mind that this kind of chocolate may not stand up to warmer temperatures and will melt in your hands (in my case, plainly melted chocolate set in the freezer stays hard at room temperature and doesn't soften, but it does begin to melt when held in the hand).
