Coffee Cookies - Turning a Favorite Family Cake Recipe Into Cookies

When I saw the Instructable's Cookie Competition guidelines I became inspired. My idea was to try to make a cookie version of one of my favorite family dessert recipes: Brazilian Coffee Cake.

It's sweet but also packs a punch due to the instant coffee that is used, making it an interesting option for a cookie attempt. These are the results of this experiment.

As per usual, I'm somehow down to the wire when it comes to completing this project. I'd planned on having this done before Christmas break but, alas, things did not go according to my wishes. I'm making this the night of the deadline so I have little time for recipe perfecting.

Dry Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups - Flour

1 1/4 cup of White Sugar

3/4 cup of Brown Sugar

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 Tsp of Salt

1 tsp of Cornstarch

5 tbs. of instant coffee

Wet Ingredients:

14 tbs - stick of butter (slightly softened)

2 eggs

1 3/4 tbs of vanilla

2 1/2 Tbs of milk

4 oz. & 1 tbsp of Sour Cream

Preheat the oven between 350 and 375 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the strength of your oven. My oven is weak so I set it to 375.

Mix together dry ingredients (except the instant coffee)

Mix all the wet ingredients into the same bowl as the dry ingredients.

This is not a step, merely a note about some of the changes I made from my initial recipe attempt. I added milk to the overall recipe; and added to the amount of sugar, sour cream and (there was one other item I cannot remember but that is not overly important). I taste tested in between to see if I could tell what was needed. I think I got close to my desired taste and consistency. As you can see from the pictures, the mixture was entirely too dry at first.

Now that the cookie dough is ready, add in the instant coffee. Thoroughly mix it in.

Bring out the cookie sheets, however you do them. I personally used a sheet of parchment paper on top of a metal cookie sheet. Place spoons of the dough around the sheet.

I added chocolate chips to a few of the cookies for the sake of science! Make sure to cover most of the chocolate chips with dough.

Once put in oven, set timer to 10 minutes. It might need a tiny bit of adjustment depending on your oven strength.

Remove from oven and allow to cool. Once it hardens a bit, dig in!

(I'm having to rewrite this part because the internet went out for a bit and this didn't save so it won't be as good.)

The chocolate chip additions were phenomenal, chocolate and coffee are a beautiful match after all.

Overall, the recipe is fairly good but still needs a lot of work. I did expect this to be the case so I'm not too upset. This was, after all, an experiment. The salt levels need to be tweaked, more flour could be added for density purposes and a bit more baking powder & soda for the cookies to rise more etc.

With a few more attempts, I'm confident this recipe will be something I can be truly proud of.