Delicious soft cookies studded with pistachios and flavoured with vanilla. These Pistachio & Vanilla Cookies are simple to make & definitely a bit special!
Who doesn’t love a cookie?
I absolutely love cookies. For me they have to be soft, at least in the middle. But I was looking at the cookie recipes I already have here on my blog. Some of my favourites are my Peanut Butter Cup Cookies and White Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cookies. But all of my cookie recipes include chocolate…and quite a few of them involve peanut butter too! So it was time for something different.
Pistachios are made to be used in baking
I think pistachios are perfect to use in baking. They add such a lovely flavour and colour to your bakes. My Pistachio Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing is one of my favourite cakes. It doesn’t take a genius to see where I got the inspiration for these Pistachio & Vanilla Cookies from! These cookies are soft and delicious and are really elevated with the sweet drizzle.
Tips for making Pistachio & Vanilla Cookies
If you are new to pistachios, you may not know you can buy a few different types. For baking you need unsalted and deshelled pistachios. If you have plenty of time on your hands you can buy unsalted pistachios in their shells and deshell them yourself, but personally I can think of better things to do with my time! You will need to grind them yourself which I do in my mini food processor. You don’t want to grind them too finely so they are dust; but you don’t want huge chunks.
When baking the cookies, they will look quite pale when they come out of the oven. Don’t be tempted to leave them in the oven thinking they’re not cooked enough. One of the best things about these cookies are the delicious softness of them so you don’t want to over bake them!
For the drizzle, you can go as fancy or rustic as you like. I spooned the drizzle into a piping bag and snipped off the tip to get a small hole and then piped it across each cookie. If you don’t want to do this, you can easily use a spoon. You will get a more rustic look but I think that is quite nice with home baking.
Personally, I think the best way of getting even sized cookies is to use a small ice cream scoop. I have an ice cream scoop for every occasion. It is definitely the easiest way of scooping out cookies or cupcake batter. My smallest scoop gave me balls of cookie dough that weighed approximately 25g. If you don’t have a small ice cream scoop, then a tablespoon measuring spoon should work quite well.
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Pistachio & Vanilla Cookies
Delicious soft cookies studded with pistachios and flavoured with vanilla. These Pistachio & Vanilla Cookies are simple to make & definitely a bit special!
Ingredients
For the cookies
- 100 g caster sugar
- 115 g margarine
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 200 g plain flour
- 75 g pistachios ground
For the drizzle
- 100 g icing sugar
- 3 tsp water
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp pistachios ground
Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan assisted, 200°C non fan) and line two baking trays with silicone liners or parchment paper
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Add the margarine and sugar to your mixer or a large bowl and beat until pale and fluffy
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Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix again
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Add in the flour and ground pistachios and mix until just combined
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Spoon balls of cookie dough onto the lined tins leaving enough space for the cookies to spread slightly when baking
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Bake in the oven for 10 minutes until slightly golden
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Leave to cook for a few minutes on the trays before transferring to a wire rack and leaving to cool completely
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Once the cookies have cooled, make the drizzle. Add the icing sugar, water and vanilla extract to a bowl and stir until any lumps have gone
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Drizzle over the cookies either by spooning into a piping bag and cutting a small hole in the end or with a spoon for a more rustic look
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Finish by scattering each cookie with some ground pistachios
Recipe Notes
Keep in an air tight container for 3-4 days.
Nutritional information is given as a guide only.
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Yum! I really enjoy eating desserts with pistachios in it, but I haven’t baked any yet. Your cookies look and sound delicious.
Thanks for sharing at #CookBlogShare!
Thanks 🙂 You should definitely give baking with pistachios a try!
These look lovely and practically identical, no idea how you managed to make them look so perfect. I really like the flavour combination.
Thanks Monika, I use a small ice cream scoop to get them all a similar size. It’s so quick and easy.
I love how neat they look and the flavours are some of my favourites for cookies
Thanks Kat 🙂
These cookies look sooo delicious! Love the little bits of crushed pistachios on top too, i’m sure they add a delicious crunch to the cookies!
Thank you. They do and I love the colour of them too!
Your cookies are so beautifully identical, that never happens to me lol. I love how soft and pillowy they are but with a bit of nutty crunch and so quick and easy to whip up too! Unsalted pistachios have been added to the shopping list now, I shall report back! Thank you for sharing these beauties with #BakingCrumbs 🙂
Thanks Jo. I make it easy for myself and use an ice cream scoop! Hope you like them if you make them 🙂
These are just perfect little cookies and so sophisticated. I could imagine them in a very posh hotel with afternoon tea. What a delicious flavour combo too. Thank you so much for sharing them with #BakingCrumbs
Love the sound of these cookies and they look so elegant too. Pistachios are so delicious, it’s a shame they’re so expensive. These would be perfect as Christmas gifts though.
It is a shame, they seem to just keep increasing in price too! They definitely would be 🙂