Chocolate Espresso Spritz Cookies update traditional spritz with barista-style flavor. Sandwiched with melted chocolate, these festive butter cookies are a mouthful of deliciousness.
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Why you will love this recipe
It’s fun and easy to quickly make dozens of beautifully shaped cookies with a cookie press.
I’ve made spritz cookies in a variety of flavors and shapes including vanilla flowers, cinnamon owls, and now Chocolate Espresso Chanukah dreidels and Christmas wreaths.
Spritz recipes are simple to throw together. The only hard part is deciding which shape to make first!
There are so many possibilities! I use an OXO cookie press that comes with discs to create 10 different shapes, both seasonal and generic.
Some people think of spritz cookies as only a Christmas treat, but with OXO seasonal disc sets (spring or Christmas), there is a shape for any occasion all year.
Once I chose the discs to make Chanukah dreidels and Christmas wreaths, I needed a recipe that would be sturdy enough for mailing and gifting.
Fragile cookies will crumble in transit. Chocolate Espresso Spritz Cookies are lightly crunchy, with a melt-in-your-mouth quality, but are not crumbly.
To reinforce the sturdiness for shipping, I sandwiched them together with a melted chocolate filling. The dreidels are filled and decorated with dark melting chocolate and the wreaths are filled and decorated with white melting chocolate.
I had so much fun making these that I sent a text to my daughter saying that we should make them as Christmas gifts for her co-teachers.
My daughter had told me she was looking for a recipe for homemade treats for her co-teachers, but I didn’t realize she was talking about 19 co-teachers! That’s ok.
These treats fit our need for a recipe that makes a lot of beautiful and delicious cookies quickly. My press is going to get a real workout this weekend!
Chocolate Espresso Spritz Cookies are ideal for gifts, party platters, cookie exchanges, care packages, and Santa’s plate. Pick a shape and sprinkle that suites your celebration and enjoy!
More espresso and coffee cookies
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Chocolate Espresso Spritz Cookies
Ingredients
Cookies
- 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate baking bar melted
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
- 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Decorating
- 1 ½ - 2 cups melting chocolate chunks or wafers chocolate wafers formulated for melting or tempered chocolate
- Sprinkles
Instructions
Cookies
- Preheat oven to 400° F.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, and espresso powder. Set the dry ingredients aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the egg and vanilla. Mix to combine.
- Beat in the melted chocolate.
- Gradually add the flour mixture. Mixing just until incorporated.
- Fill a cookie press, fitted with the desired design disc, with the cookie dough.
- Press out the cookies 1 inch apart, onto an unlined cookie sheet.
- Bake for about 7 minutes or until set.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Decorating
- Melt chocolate pieces for decorating.
- Sandwich pairs of cookies, bottoms together, with melted chocolate spread or piped between the cookies.
- Place left over melted chocolate into a small ziplock bag with a small bit of a bottom corner cut off.
- Drizzle or dot the top of one cookie with melted chocolate. Immediately add sprinkles.
- Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, Chocolate Espresso Spritz Cookies stay fresh for at least 2 weeks.
Notes
- For best coffee flavor use espresso powder not instant coffee granules. Espresso beans have a more intense flavor that won't get lost in the chocolaty cookies.
- These are great cookies to enjoy with a cup of coffee!
- For shipping, sandwiching the spritz cookies adds sturdiness as well as deliciousness to the cookies.
- Store with wax paper between layers in a plastic storage container.
- Use crinkled wax paper at the top to ensure no movement within the container during shipping.
- Cookies decorated with chocolate should only be mailed to and from cool weather locations.
- For warm weather shipping, spritz cookies can be decorated by sprinkling with nonpareils before baking.
Nutrition
Baking tools I used and recommended in this post:
K. Bizal
More and more I see so many cookie recipes using unsalted butter. And I don't understand why. I am not a professional baker but someone who has been baking for her family for 50 years. Usually if unsalted butter is used then there is salt added in the recipe. I miss the salt in this recipe. I was just wondering if there is a particularly reason that unsalted butter is used in baking or is it just personal preference in the taste of a cookie. I personally love the salt in the flavor. Especially in the raw dough. (And yes, I still eat raw cookie dough. I haven't gotten sick yet!!)
Wendy Sondov
The reason bakers use unsalted butter is to have control of the amount of salt added to the recipe. Different brands use different amounts of salt. The salt in most cookie recipes is added to enhance the other flavors or for the chemical reaction it creates with the baking soda/powder for levening, not to provide salty flavor. If you want salty flavor, it is easy enough to add the amount that matches your taste. As for eating raw dough, there are many potentially dangerous things we can ignore and may get away with. However, once you or a family member has experienced salmonella, you may feel it's not worth the risk.
Pam F
I just made these using my Mom's old Mirro cookie press. They are SO YUMMY!
I'd just made some lighter coffee spritz cookies as sandwiches (with dark chocolate in between) so, instead of dipping these in dark chocolate, I tempered white chocolate and drew garland stripes across the trees and sprinkled them with gold sparkle sugar. They are lovely and look so perfect paired with the other coffee sandwiches. These may well become part of my updated Christmas cooke repertoire.
Wendy Sondov
Pam, those tree cookies sound BEAUTIFUL! I love that decorating idea. The white chocolate with gold sugar sounds absolutely elegant!
Marlene
Is there a way to mke these cookies without a cookie press? I gave mine away many years ago and am at a point in my life where I don’t want to add more stuff! I love chocolate and coffee together and would like to try these. Thanks!
[PS—I m pretty sure that is a Christmas tree disk, not a dreidel—but great creativity to use it s such! There are so few options for Jewish motifs.)
The Monday Box
Hi Marlene! You could definitely use this recipe with a small scoop or tablespoon like a drop cookie. Then just sandwich the resulting circle cookies together or eat individually without filling. I HIGHLY recommend that you look at this Chocolate Espresso Biscotti recipe too. It is one of my most popular recipes and is ideal for a chocolate-coffee lover! I hope you enjoy both recipes!
https://themondaybox.com/chocolate-espresso-biscotti/
p.s. I know the Christmas tree disk wasn't meant as a dreidel, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder! 😉
Miz Helen
Chocolate Espresso, oh my one of my favorite flavors! Hope you are having a good week and thanks so much for sharing with us at Full Plate Thursday!
Miz Helen
Maria | passion fruit, paws and peonies
Chocolate and coffee flavours together make my heart sing - thanks for the recipe xx
Diane
My Mother made these every Christmas, though she is long departed, I think I shall teach my grands the art of baking, to carry on the tradition. Love the grown up twist of expresso for pot lucks and hotess gifts.
The Monday Box
What a wonderful tradition to pass down to your grands, Diane! Kids will especially love the "magic" of a cookie press. 🙂 I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!
saltandserenity
I never knew you could get all those different discs available for cookie presses. My mind is reeling with the possibilities. Your cookies are lovely.
The Monday Box
The possibilities are staggering, Cindy! I do need to write to OXO though, and let them know they have their dreidel disc mislabeled as a tree. 😉
Shannon @loveatfirstbento
Loving those bright blue sprinkles atop those dark chocolate cookies! And I've never used a cookie press before, but seeing how beautiful these spritz cookies of yours turned out I'm very tempted to add one to my Xmas list! 😀
The Monday Box
Shannon, you have to take a look at the Impress Bakeware site I have linked. There are so many CUTE disc shapes that I know you in particular will appreciate! I received my OXO press as part of a campaign, and now I won't use anything else. It really is easy and I love the results. 🙂
Shannon @loveatfirstbento
Oh I so will! Thanks for letting me know about it Wendy! 😀
Tricia @ Saving Room for Dessert
Wendy these are wonderful! I love spritz cookies and cannot wait to try this chocolate version. Thank you so much for sharing it!
The Monday Box
Thanks, Tricia! I found the chocolate espresso flavor to be addicting. It is SO perfect with a cup of coffee.