Honey Pistachio Chocolate Chip Cookies
a lightly Sicilian rendition on the classic
Happy Wednesday! I’m popping in with a brand new mid-week pick me up recipe for you, because every day is a great day for cookies.
When thinking about the types of Sicilian recipes I wanted to share with you this month, I considered going ultra-classic and filling your inbox with cannolis and casatelle and the like, but decided to make a last minute switch. I have a note on my phone where I keep a very long list of recipe ideas and flavor inspiration and I as traversed across Sicily, I kept adding to it.
While I do eventually want to share some of those classic recipes with you (that’s what cookbooks are for, right?), I really wanted to share the flavors of the island with you. Sicily teems with local flavors—citrus, olives, honey, anchovies, grapes, nuts, and so much more. It’s a punchy flavor paradise and I wanted to you to have a little taste.
On our first day in Palermo, we went looking for wine to stock our AirBnB. We found a little shop tucked next to a gelato shop on Via Vittoria Emanuele, with a friendly, English-speaking store owner, a shop cat who lounged on the counter, and a lot of local wine. At the suggestion of the store owner, we bought a few bottles of Donna Fugata wine, a well-known producer of wine in Sicily. We loved every bottle we drank. So, when we were visiting Marsala and had the chance to visit the Donna Fugata winery, we took it.
Donna Fugata, which means “escaping or flying woman” in Italian, is a female-owned, family run winery in Sicily. The owners are a husband and wife team, both who had family roots in the wine world (after all, it is Marsala), but Donna Fugata was the baby of the wife, who wanted to branch out from her family’s Marsala production and turn her focus to producing reds and whites. She left her job teaching (which is where the name comes from) and created a little Sicilian wine empire. Today, it’s a very large producer of Sicilian wine with vineyards all across the island and it is decidedly female-forward. The wine is great, the labels are beautiful (and of course, designed by a female artist), and I’d go back in a heartbeat.
Ok so how do we get from wineries to cookies? I’ll tell you. During our wine tasting, we had the opportunity to try a wine made from Zibibbio grapes. Zibibbio grapes are very rare, and were originally cultivated solely on a tiny island off the coast of Sicily, where Donna Fugato still grows their grapes today. A white grape, the vines grow close to the ground and look more like prickly bushes than traditional vines, and the grape itself finds similarities to muscat or gewurztraminer.
Here’s where it gets really fun though. The word Z’bib means “dried grape” or raisin, which is exactly what is done in the cultivation and fermentation process. For the bottle of wine we had the opportunity to taste, our trusty guide Ignacio explained that half of the grapes are cultivated in an earlier harvest and left to dry. Then the dried grapes are mixed into the the freshly cultivated grapes for fermentation—resulting in a sweet wine with a subtle brightness. Not quite as sweet or syrupy as a full dessert wine, but with a creaminess that a traditional white doesn’t have, like honey straight from the hive. The food pairing for this glass of wine was an extra dark piece of chocolate and the two of those flavors together were really beautiful. I jotted it down in my little note— “dark bitter chocolate with honey (zibibbio donna fugata)”.
And here we are. Great wine in cookie form.
honey pistachio chocolate chip cookies
makes 32-36 cookies
ingredients:
3 cups (440 g) all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup (160 g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (84 g) honey
2 eggs
1 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
200 g chopped dark chocolate, 70%-80% preferred
100 g chopped pistachios
procedure:
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until smooth and fluffy, 1-2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then add the honey. Beat once more until incorporated.
With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs and egg yolk, one at a time, until incorporated. Add the vanilla and continue to mix for about 30 seconds more, until everything is smooth and homogenous.
Gradually add the dry ingredients, mixing on low speed, just until all of the dry ingredients are worked in and no flour streaks remain.
Remove the bowl from the mixer and scrape down the sides. Add the dark chocolate and pistachios, and stir using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until evenly distributed.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and scoop dough into 2 tsp sized dollops, evenly spacing them on the prepared baking. Transfer to the refrigerator and let chill for 30 minutes.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325° F and bake for 9-11 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the tops are set. Let cool completely on the pan.
Store any extra cookie dough, scooped, in a large freezer bag in the freezer for up to 3 months.