Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Updated Oct 28, 2025, Published Nov 30, 2023
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These Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies have delicious coffee notes that complement the dark chocolate chunks. These cookies are chewy, soft and deliciously rich, topped with flaky sea salt. They’re a departure from the traditional cc cookies (similar to these Miso Chocolate Chip Cookies).
What Are Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies?
Say no to instant espresso. For the record I think instant espresso is really delicious in, like, a chocolate cake. You don’t taste it, it’s just there to accentuate the chocolate flavor. But in this cookie, it was a really overpowering flavor and it wasn’t a good one.
Instant espresso powder doesn’t yield a delicious cup of espresso. I don’t think any of us are surprised by that.
Use Good Quality of Espresso and/or Coffee
Ok, so REALLY good espresso is expensive. It can sometimes be, like, $15 a bag. I tested this with Allegro coffee brand of espresso and I didn’t even buy an entire bag. I bought a half bag, which made it around $5. WIN! If you buy fancy espresso grounds, use those! But I figured it’d be kinda silly to spend a lot of money on awesome espresso to only use it for this recipe.
How to Incorporate Coffee and/or Espresso Into a Chocolate Chip Cookie
The butter is melted and then the espresso grounds are steeped in it, creating a buttery espresso mixture. I then just ran it through a fine mesh strainer. You may be tempted to run it through a coffee filter but this will NOT work. Butter is too thick. We found out the hard way so don’t do it!
We also added a bit of espresso grounds to the dry ingredients so it looked more espresso-like.
The coffee/espresso flavor is not overpowering but it’s there and it works with the chocolate so well. It’s totally delicious. WE LOVE IT!! I hope you love these espresso/coffee chocolate chip cookies as much as I do!
How to Make Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Melt butter. And then turn off the heat.
- Pour in the espresso and give it a mix until all of the granules are coated in the butter. Cover the saucepan and let it steep; this is really going to give us that deep espresso/coffee flavor.
- Pour the butter through a fine mesh strainer and press the coffee granules so it releases as much of the melted butter as possible. If it’s a particularly cold day, and the butter may have solidified, reheat the butter just until it’s melted.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients. We have all-purpose flour, espresso grounds (just a teeny bit), baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Beat together the espresso butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs and vanilla.
- Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until the speckles of flour have disappeared.
- Add the chocolate chips and mix.
- Chill the dough in the fridge. Why do we chill dough in the fridge, you ask? Well, we do it because if we bake it right away, they’ll bake flatter. If the dough is SUPER cold, they may not spread.
- Scoop out cookie dough balls. I like to scoop everything all at once, put them on a baking sheet and bake them from there. It means that I can clean up while I’m baking the cookies.
- Bake the cookie dough. I like to bake about 8 at a time. And then continue baking the batches of cookies until you’ve worked your way through the cookie dough.
- Sprinkle the tops with flaky sea salt. And serve.
- If you want to freeze them and bake them up later, I have a whole post on that giving detailed instructions.
More Cookie Recipes That I Love
- Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Sesame Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies
- Iced Oatmeal Cookies
- Strawberry and Cream Cookies
- Berry Crinkle Cookies
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you tried this Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe or any other recipe on my website, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the 📝 comments below. Thanks for visiting!
Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Equipment
- 1 stainless steel bowl
- 1 silicon spatula
Ingredients
Espresso Butter Mixture:
- 1 1/4 cup unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup espresso grounds
Dry Mix:
- 3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon espresso grounds
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Wet Mix:
- 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 12 ounces dark chocolate chunks or semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Large flakes of salt, such as Maldon or Jacobson
Instructions
To Make the Espresso Butter Mixture:
- To a medium saucepan, set over medium heat, add the butter. When the butter has melted, turn off the heat. Stir in the espresso and mix until it’s covered in the butter. Cover the saucepan and allow to steep for 20 minutes. When it’s done, pour it through a fine mesh strainer, into a large bowl OR the bowl of a stand-up mixer.
- Discard the used up espresso grounds. Set aside.
To Make the Dry Mix:
- To a medium bowl, whisk the flour, espresso grounds, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Set aside.
To Make the Wet Mix:
- Grab the large bowl OR the bowl of a stand-up mixer (using the paddle attachment) with the melted/espresso butter in it. To that bowl, add the brown sugar and white sugar. Beat together until nice and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, until combined. Pour in the vanilla extract and beat once more.
- In one batch, add the flour. You will probably have to lift up the head part of your mixer to be able to add it all at once. Cover the mixer with a clean kitchen towel and turn it on low speed. Mix until the flour is mostly combined and then increase speed until you no longer see any flecks of flour. Pour in the chocolate chunks and mix one last time. Transfer the dough to the fridge to chill for an hour or up to 2 days.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Using a medium cookie scoop, scoop out balls of dough. If it’s super chilled, you may need to push some dough into the scoop so it’s nice and compact and then release the lever. I like to add all the balls of cookie dough to a sheet of parchment versus scooping dough, as I bake.
- Transfer 6 to 7 balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing them a part because these do spread. Place in the oven and bake for about 7 to 8 minutes. If the dough is super cold, it may need up to 10 minutes to bake. They should be light to medium golden brown. Sprinkle with a few pinches of salt upon exiting the oven. Repeat until you’ve baked all the cookies.
- To freeze, add the cookie dough balls to a baking sheet and stick in the freezer until very cold, about 20 minutes and then transfer to a freezer-safe plastic bag.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Yum!! Does that ever sound delicious! I love coffee and it does enhance the flavor of chocolate. I just made 5 batches of Salty Sweet Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies!! They are so decadent but I just wonder if I used your method of adding espresso to the dough — hmmmmmm!! It’s something to think about. I’m pinning your recipe to try later.
Adrianna how do you do it? You take an absolute classic and turn it into something far more amazing! I cannot wait to make these!
Thank you!
How lucky. I’ve actually been googling recipes for espresso chocolate chip cookies non-stop this past week. I have made them twice already, and both times I disappointingly could not taste any coffee flavor after the cookies came out of the oven (adding a few tbsp of espresso powder to a cookie dough mix simply does not do anything). My last resort was to buy something like Trader Joe’s dark chocolate coffee squares and breaking them into chunks to mix into the dough. But I am tempted to try this method now… infusing the espresso into butter sounds pretty interesting! I am a huge coffee lover and given that you say the espresso flavor is not overpowering, I am curious if I should add more espresso to the mixture or will that cause the batch to come out bitter?
I make a similar recipe but I use instant espresso powder in the butter sugar eggs creaming process- which works great! Seems like much less work and less pots to wash!
I actually tried this recipe with instant espresso and hated the flavor! 🙂
So I did end up making these and similar to my previous experiences, I could not taste much coffee flavor 🙁 but it was worth a try, so thanks!
These are my kind of cookies! You do have 1/4 cup espresso powder listed in the wet ingredients. I assume that is not supposed to be there?
Yum! These sound decadent. 🙂
OMG Yes!! I love your cozy choc chip cookies, i definitely don’t want to admit how many times i’ve made them…. and these? with espresso?? happening right now!!
Hello! I’m new to your blog and am in the mood to make cookies! I ‘m going to give your original version a whirl. I usually make Alton Brown’s “the chewy” as it starts with melted butter, too but requires a bit of milk and I don’t have any. Thanks for the motivation.
These are the most shiny and gooey pockets of chocolate chunks ever! Completely smitten by these cookies and will have to make them one day soon.
This recipe has my name written all over it! Can’t wait to try this one!
Gemma
www.fadedwindmills.com
Wow, you truly are an evil genius….I’m pining this! And thanks for sharing your mishaps with us. I bet the salt is a nice addition because one of my favorite treats is homemade coffee ice cream sprinkled with salt.