Sometimes a cookie starts with a recipe idea. Sometimes it starts with a question.
In this case, it started with Vietnamese coffee.
I’ve always loved what I term ‘hot beverage cultures’ and it was through curiosity that I first encountered egg coffee. If you haven’t had it before, it’s strong coffee topped with a custard-like mixture made with egg yolks and condensed milk. After discovering, somewhat to my surprise, that I liked that, I explored more of Vietnam’s hot beverage culture.
The more I learned about Vietnamese coffee traditions, the more I became interested in coconut coffee, the combination of strong coffee, sweetness, and coconut.
There are coffee cookies that taste like coffee and coconut cookies that taste like coconut.
This one manages to do both.
The coffee hits first, with that deep roasted flavor I loved when I first encountered Vietnamese egg coffee. Then the coconut comes through, particularly in the little bits of toasted coconut. The cookie itself stays soft and chewy rather than turning into a crisp coconut biscuit.
And although the inspiration came from Vietnamese coffee traditions, this is ultimately a cookie rather than an attempt at culinary replication.
That’s an important distinction for me.
My goal with Around the World in 180 Flavors is not to take traditional foods from around the world and simply rename them as cookies. It’s to learn about flavors and ingredients, understand some of the stories behind them, and then see where I can take them in my own kitchen.
Sometimes that means recreating something fairly closely.
And sometimes it means tasting my way into Vietnamese coffee traditions—and thinking:
I wonder what this would taste like as a cookie.
Coconut Coffee Cookies
3
dozen20
minutes10
minutes30
minutesIngredients
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
1-2 teaspoons hot water
170 grams butter
200 grams sugar
1 egg
38 grams coconut milk
300 grams flour
45 grams toasted coconut + extra for rolling, if desired
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions
- Cookie Dough
- Mix instant espresso powder and hot water; set aside to cool.
- In a stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy, about two minutes. Add the egg, coconut milk, and espresso and mix until combined.
- In a separate bowl, mix the flour, toasted coconut, baking soda and salt.
- Combine the flour mixture with the wet ingredients until a cohesive dough forms. It may be a little sticky. I like to refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour to make rolling a little easier.
- Assembly
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Roll the dough into balls about 1 1/2 tablespoons in size. Role them in toasted coconut and place them on a prepared baking sheet.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.
If you like these cookies, check out any of my other coffee cookies:
And keep an eye out for a bonus, Brazilian-inspired Vietnamese coconut coffee cookie.
A Note About How I Measure My Recipes Now
If you’ve looked closely at some of my newer recipes, you may have noticed something different: I’m measuring in grams.
This is a change I’ve resisted for a while.
I’ve always written recipes with American home bakers in mind, which means cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons are still included when they’re useful. But as I’ve developed more and more cookie recipes, I’ve become increasingly convinced that weighing ingredients makes the process better.
For one thing, it’s more precise.
A cup of flour can vary surprisingly dramatically depending on how you fill it. The same is true of ingredients like brown sugar, shredded coconut, and powdered sugar. When I’m developing a recipe, I want to know that 200 grams of flour is 200 grams of flour every time—not approximately the amount I happened to scoop into a measuring cup that day.
But there’s another reason I’ve switched:
Fewer dishes. Many, many fewer dishes.
Instead of measuring flour into one cup, sugar into another, coconut into a third, and so on, I can put my mixing bowl on the scale, tare it, and add ingredients directly. Add 200 grams of flour. Tare. Add 100 grams of sugar. Tare. Add the next ingredient.
For someone who develops a lot of cookies, that’s a surprisingly meaningful improvement.
I’ll still measure teaspoons and tablespoons—single digit gram measurements are just a little too much for me—but I’m generally moving toward grams. I know not everyone has a kitchen scale, but there are a lot of decent converters out there.
