Acorn-Shaped Walnut Cookies
Acorn-Shaped Walnut Cookies
Adapted from Epicurious’ “Walnut Acorn Cookies”
Cookies
- 2 cups flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, melted
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extra
- 4 oz walnuts, finely chopped
Decoration
- 8 oz Guitard’s Milk Chocolate chips, melted
- 4 oz walnuts, finely chopped
Preheat oven to 350F.
Combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the walnuts and mix dough with an electric mixer until it starts to come together.
Use a #60 scoop to portion the dough and form it into balls. Take a ball of dough and use a small spoon to slightly flatten and pinch the dough into an acorn shape.
Place the cookies 1” apart from each other on a flat pan and bake until light golden brown, approximately 11 minutes.
Cool cookies. Dip the widest part of the cookie into the melted chocolate and then into the chopped walnuts. Wait for the chocolate to set completely before serving.
Recipe yields roughly 38 cookies?
Notes
I chopped the walnuts by hand, but I should have chopped them in a food processor. I like to put the chopped walnuts in a bowl and shake the bowl until the larger pieces move to the surface. I add the larger “finely” chopped pieces of nuts to the cookies and save the much finer pieces of nuts for the cookie topping. I feel like this ensures that the nuts adhere better to the chocolate.
I usually make these cookies using pecans and Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips, but the milk chocolate and walnuts work really well together. I haven’t made these cookies for so long that I do not remember what the pecan version tastes like.
The brown sugar and walnuts lend an almost toffee-like flavor to these cookies especially with the milk chocolate. However the cookie does not taste too sweet!
I tasted the raw dough and could not remember if I added salt or if more salt needed to be added to the cookies. To be on the safe side I lightly sprinkled kosher salt over the cookies after they had been dipped in chocolate and nuts. I really liked the result and I think next time I will add salt to the dough but sprinkle some over the cookies as well. Kosher salt seemed to work just fine; fleur de sel may be too excessive.
