The Single Ingredient That Makes Your Chocolate Chip Cookies Stand Out

It makes them instantly better.

There are millions of ways to make chocolate chip cookies. Although many swear by Toll House as the gold standard, the internet is full of ideas on how to improve the humble classic. You can use brown butter instead of regular, upgrade the type of sugar you use, or use malted milk powder for butterscotch notes. Personally, my chocolate chip cookie secret ingredient is instant espresso powder.

How To Add Espresso Powder To Cookies

It’s as simple as whisking a pinch or two into your dry ingredients (the flour, baking soda and/or powder, and salt). The fine granules will dissolve in the dough and impart subtle mocha notes, adding a deeper, more complex flavor to your cookies.

The cookies won’t taste like a latte, but sort of like a bay leaf in a stew, the instant espresso powder rounds out the cookie with a subtle bitter background flavor that balances the sweetness of the dough. Instant espresso will be the subtly perceptible but not quite identifiable ingredient that will have people wondering what kind alchemy you were up to in the kitchen. (In a good way!)

I boldly (and perhaps foolishly) eyeball a hearty pinch of espresso powder when adding it to my cookies, but about a teaspoon is all you really need. Remember, the instant espresso powder has a bitter flavor—in the right proportion this helps balance the sweetness of the cookie, but add too much of it and the bitterness can quickly become overpowering.

Coffee and Chocolate

We’ve written a lot about the relationship between chocolate and coffee. The two are not only complementary flavors, but coffee helps intensify chocolate’s flavor. In a chocolate cake batter this often comes from the addition of hot brewed coffee, which helps bloom the cocoa powder and draw out its rich flavors.

But you don’t always have to add coffee in liquid form. Just like with these cookies, you can add espresso powder to the flour mixture of cakes, bars, and more, if they don’t already call for coffee in the mix.

Powder Not Grounds

Instant espresso powder is a very different product from espresso grounds (i.e. ground coffee beans). Look for it in the baking aisle or the tea and coffee aisle at your local grocery store. DeLallo is one brand we particularly like.

Fair warning: This super concentrated instant coffee product isn’t really ideal for drinking (once, in a moment of caffeine deprivation I dissolved some in hot water to drink as a morning jump start, and it was far too bitter). Instant espresso powder is great, however, for baked goods as mentioned but also spice rubs.

Instant Coffee Vs. Ground Coffee: What's The Difference?

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