I Love Hazelnuts with Coffee
Hazelnut as the Main Ingredient
As far back as I can remember I have always loved hazelnut flavored coffee. Hazelnuts have a buttery richness that I love. I cannot believe it took me this long to develop a cookie where hazelnut was the star of the show. With that being said my next question was what will go with this great taste. Of course coffee. Read about the benefits of adding hazelnuts to your diet.
Espresso
Coffee or espresso has a bitter taste which will help cut through some of the richness of the hazelnut. But on the other hand, the hazelnuts help mellow out the espresso so it is a great marriage of flavors. I purchased the instant type that is recommended for making tiramisu.
Vanilla Bean Paste
While you can certainly use pure vanilla extract I choose to go up a notch and use vanilla bean paste. It has a more vanilla taste and smell and has the vanilla bean flecks throughout the bottle. Once you start to use vanilla bean paste or the vanilla beans themselves the cost goes up quite a bit. By no means are either of these options cheap. You can spend quite a bit of money on just vanilla, the brand, where it comes from, and the type. But it does make for a great tasting cookie. If you would like more details on vanilla here is a company just for vanilla The Vanilla Company
To me, this is the perfect cookie of all the flavors I love. Give me coffee with hazelnut and I am a happy camper. I hope this helps you in deciding how to make your own cookie recipe or make the one I created for this week.
This flavor matching goes with the cookie:
Hazelnut Espresso Shortbread Cookie
