Salted Espresso Sugar Cookies

+ a few Thanksgiving dessert ideas

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope you’re feeling cool, confident, and not at all stressed about this week’s festivities. It’s just going to be the four of us for Thanksgiving this year and since the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be happening about 3 miles away from our home, we’ve decided to brave the crowds and head into the city for it. It’s Marco’s first Thanksgiving and we live in NY now, so why not? (We will see if my zeal has waned come Thursday at 6 am.)

I am not a traditional Thanksgiving person at all—we’ve done Cornish hens, pasta, and even a tapas board in years past. Anything to get away from the traditional turkey and stuffing spread. But going to the parade feels like the most classically traditional thing to do, so this year, we’re leaning in. There will still be no turkey because I refuse to cook a giant bird for only our little family, but we will do a cozy roasted chicken and veggies in its place along with mashed potatoes, gravy, a bright zingy salad, and a pie of sorts. I’m still deciding on what that iteration will be.

Thanksgiving, to me, is also the unofficial start of holiday cookie season, and these little sugared espresso cookies are here for the transition. They make a great, light post-Thanksgiving feast treat, or would be perfect for snacking on while putting up Christmas decorations on Friday. Simple, sweet, and festive—my kind of cookie.

salted espresso sugar cookies

My friend Deepika, who runs The Deeper Living, writes the very best sugar cookie recipes and I almost always use one of her recipes as my jumping off point. I adapted one of her sugar cookie recipes by adjusting the fat technique (we melt half of the butter), added olive oil, brown sugar and instant espresso, and rolled the cookies in a crunchy espresso sugar. The result is crispy on the outside and soft and pillowy on the inside. The espresso flavor also gets stronger the next day, which is a real win in my book.

For the instant espresso, I keep a box of these Cafe Bustelo Instant Espresso packets in my pantry (they are like $2 a box at the grocery store), but you can use any instant espresso you’d like.

and a few thanksgiving dessert ideas…

• for pumpkin pie with a twist, try this Pumpkin Ricotta Tart

• for a cozy, caramel-y cake, try my Fall Apple Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

• for a very low-maintenance dessert, try these cute Apple Cider Affogatos

• for a fall cookie, try my Butterscotch Oatmeal Cookies with Espresso and Hazelnuts

salted espresso sugar cookies

makes about 28 cookies