Chocolate Nibby Espresso Cookies

Recently took Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate, which is all about cooking with really good dark chocolate, out of the library after having made brownies from the book as posted by one of my favorite blogs Smitten Kitchen. Not too many of the recipes really struck me, but I scanned a few to save, this being one of them. I had bought some cocoa nibs not long ago and had no idea what to do with them, so this recipe seemed perfect. The "espresso" comes from ground coffee beans. I didn't have unsweetened chocolate, but luckily she provides substitution instructions for using 70%, etc., chocolate instead.

When I made the dough on Saturday, I was worried because it was more like a batter than a cookie dough. But the recipe called for it to sit in the fridge anywhere from an hour to four days. So I figured we'd see how it turned out overnight.

Of course, it had a lot of melted butter and chocolate in it so I knew it would harden, and of course, it hardened too much so I left it out to warm up a bit. Then I got impatient so I made a mess digging and scooping and whatnot. Anyway, this is what they looked like beforehand:

Cooked them about 9 min.....as you can see they spread a bit and blistered a little on the top, but I could tell they were still quite soft inside. Fine by me, I'd rather undercook than overcook.

Tried putting some chocolate covered coffee beans I had lying around in some of them while they were still hot...

Needless to say, they're amazing. There's not quite enough coffee flavor, but it's there. And the nibs add a cocoa-y crunch. Delicious.