Today we must chat about these wonderful chocolate pecan cookies, friends. Made with only 1 ounce of flour (which you can easily sub for your favorite gluten-free flour blend or with almond flour), cocoa powder, bittersweet chocolate and chocolate chips, they are pretty much a chocolate cookie lover’s dream.
And if you are a true, year-round chocolate cookie fiend, you may want to check out my Christmas version of this cookie, chocolate peppermint crinkle cookies as well.
For ease of browsing, here are all of my cookie and bar recipes in one place. Thanks for stopping by!
Making Cookies Is a Labor of Love
I’m not sure if you guys have noticed the dearth of cookie recipes on my site, but I really don’t post many at all.
Why not? Because I find cookies fussy to make.
I know, I know. I’ll spend hours making a chocolate babka or an apple butter coffee cake, but I can’t be bothered to scoop a bunch of cookies? It doesn’t make too much sense, but there you have it.
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Still, cookies are fun to eat and are good for portion control (unless you eat 17. Don’t do that).
And if I make you cookies, if anyone makes you cookies, know it is a labor of love, what with all the mixing, and scooping and baking sheet after sheet.
Homemade cookies means someone loves you. Go with it.
Inspiration for These Sparkly, Chocolatey Nuggets
For these cookies, I wanted something totally chocolatey and fudgy.
For inspiration, I looked online for “chocolate truffle cookies” and found many variations on the theme.
I also am a huge fan of Gesine Bullock-Prado’s Starry Starry Night Cookies, which are gorgeously moist, rich, chocolatey and also gluten free (made with almond flour).
So, I sort of combined Gesine’s recipe with a couple of elements from some of the other recipes I found.
I made some changes, muttered an incantation or two and made the sign of the cross over the dough.
And y’all. It worked! Because these guys turned out to be everything I wanted:
- a little crisp on the outsides
- moist
- deeply chocolatey while not being too sweet
- petite
- sparkly
Chocolate Pecan Cookies: Ingredients
All the ingredients in these cookies are pretty straightforward. The mixing method is a bit different from your standard cookie made using The Creaming Method, and we’ll get to that procedure in a bit.
Here’s what you’ll need to make these guys:
- bittersweet chocolate
- unsalted butter
- toasted pecans (may sub other “creamy” nuts such as walnuts or cashews if you’d rather)
- all purpose flour (or gluten-free flour blend or fine almond flour)
- cocoa powder
- eggs
- brown sugar (dark or light)
- espresso powder or instant coffee
- kosher salt
- finely chopped bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate OR excellent quality mini semisweet chocolate chips brown sugar
- granulated sugar for rolling
How to Make Chocolate Pecan Cookies
They aren’t hard to make as long as you have a
The game plan is as follows:
- melt chocolate and butter together
- whir toasted pecans into dust along with some flour and cocoa powder (if you don’t mix them with the flour and cocoa powder, you’ll end up with pecan butter which, while delicious, is not what we want).
- Whip whole egg, sugar and flavoring to ribbon stage
- Stir pecan/flour mixture into chocolate/butter mixture.
- Fold in egg mixture and chopped chocolate or mini chips
- (OPTIONAL) Refrigerate the dough for a couple of hours to let it firm up if it needs it)
- Scoop into balls, roll in granulated sugar.
- Bake.
- Cool.
- Enjoy.
Can I Make These Cookies with Palm Sugar?
You can, and they will turn out great and delicious, I promise.
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But palm sugar does something weird with eggs where it won’t let them whip up nice and thick to the ribbon stage.
I don’t know what dark magic (or chemical issue) this is, but it’s true.
If you do decide to use palm sugar, know that the eggs will thicken considerably but won’t get to the billowy ribbon stage. After about 10 minutes of whipping, just continue with the recipe.
Nothing bad will happen.
How About Gluten-Free?
Yes, you can absolutely make these cookies gluten free.
Be careful with your sourcing of chocolate and other ingredients to make sure there won’t be any cross-contamination from shared equipment.
Then you can easily sub in 1 oz of fine almond flour or 1 oz of gluten free all purpose flour blend for the 1 oz of all purpose flour.
Alternatively, you may up the amount of pecans to 3 ounces and omit any additional flour altogether.
A Note About Measurements
NOTE: Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume, even the liquids.
Even though I try to provide you with volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a kitchen scale for ease of measuring, accuracy, and consistency.
This is the scale I use, love, and recommend:
Don't let its small price and small size fool you. The Escali Primo is an accurate and easy-to-use food scale that I have used for years. It's easy to store, easy to use, has a tare function, and easily switches between grams and ounces/pounds for accurate measurements.
I really hope you love these heavenly little chocolate pecan cookies, you guys!
PRO TIP: Enjoy these cookies slightly warm topped with some vanilla or coffee ice cream for a cookie sundae!
If you make some for yourself or for someone you love, please share a photo with me, either in the PCO Facebook Group or on instagram by tagging @onlinepastrychef and using hashtag #pcorecipe. Thanks, and enjoy!
If you run into problems, have questions, or just want to say hi, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Heavenly Chocolate Pecan Cookies
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Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 2.6 oz brown sugar dark or light
- 1 teaspoon espresso powder (you can also grind instant coffee to a powder and use that. That’s what I did)
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 oz pecans toasted
- 1 oz all purpose flour
- 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
- 8 oz bittersweet chocolate
- 2 oz unsalted butter
- 3 oz good quality mini chocolate chips or semi-sweet chocolate chopped into the same size as mini-chips
- a small bowl of granulated sugar for rolling (about 1/2 cup)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350F and set two racks as close to the middle of the oven as you can. Line two cookie sheets with Silpat or parchment. Set aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment, whip eggs, sugar, espresso powder and salt until it is very thick, light and fluffy. This will take about 10 minutes.
- While the eggs are whipping, whir up the toasted pecans, flour, and cocoa powder in the food processor until the pecans are as finely ground as you can get them. (It will look sort of like coarse cornmeal). Set aside.
- Melt the bittersweet chocolate and butter together either over simmering water or on medium power in the microwave. Stir until smooth and then set aside to cool slightly.
- Stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture until thoroughly combined.
- When the eggs have reached ribbon stage, stir one third of the eggs into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. Then thoroughly fold in the rest of the egg mixture until completely combined.
- Fold in the chocolate chips/chopped chocolate so they are evenly distributed. Set aside for a couple of minutes–batter will firm up so it’s scoopable. If the batter seems a bit soft to you, cover the bowl and refrigerate it for an hour or two.
- Measure out the dough in flat tablespoons (not mounded up), dropping each into the bowl of sugar to make sure it’s thoroughly coated and then rolling into balls. You can also use a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop.
- Place rolled dough onto cookie sheet leaving about 2" between. I was able to get 20 on one sheet and 17 on the other.
- Bake for 5 minutes.
- Rotate the pans from top to bottom and from front to back and bake another 5 minutes.
- Let cookies cool on the sheet for 5 minutes and then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.
Did You Make Any Changes?
Notes
Gluten-Free Option
Make these cookies gluten free by substituting either 1 oz of fine almond flour or 1 oz of your favorite gluten free flour blend for the 1 oz of all purpose flour called for.Nutrition
I do hope you give these chocolate pecan cookies a try. They’re not hard to make, and they do go down really easily, especially with a glass of milk!
Thank you for spending some time with me today.
Take care, and have a lovely day.
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Such a gorgeous recipe, Jennie! Iove every bit of it!
Thank you so much, Hadia! They truly are decadent. I am so happy with how they turned out!
I saw these posted on Facebook and thought that they looked really good. Then I hit the lottery when you and the Beloved stayed with me and arrived bearing a stack of them. After eating all of them within a couple of hours, I can safely say that these ARE heavenly. This was confirmed each time I grabbed a cookie…you know, just to make sure it was as good as the last!!
I love that these are DR-tasted and approved! xoxo
These cookies are begging to hop into my mouth. I don’t like dry cookies or anything that ends up tasting like a bunch of crumbs in my mouth. I might just eat 17 of these.
If you do, I promise not to tell, Maureen!
Palm sugar won’t let you whip the egg whites like regular sugar. Structure is very different to cane sugar. I suspect there is more free moisture in it or something. I experimented a while back trying to make meringue with it but no dice.
Yeah, I figured he was the culprit. Fortunately it all worked out in deliciousness. But now I know I won’t be making a Pav with palm sugar! lol
I am thrilled that you loved the name <3 Heavenly is perfect! Nettie
Moore or Less Cooking Food Blog
Yes–I love it! Thanks, Nettie! And I hope you are feeling better! xo
Can’t wait to try these. Diet will go by the wayside!
I vote these guys are a very good reason to let the diet go for a few days, Sue Ann! Enjoy!