Salted Honey Pistachio Cookies are soft, extra flavorful cookies made with browned butter, sea salt, honey and salted pistachios. This sweet and salty treat is easy to make, too!
Perfect Pistachio Cookies
You know I love a good cookie recipe. I basically built my whole business around my cookie obsession. I mean find what you love, right? Anyhow, over the coarse of the almost TEN YEARS I feel like I have perfected the art of the cookie. At least, I have perfected MY version of the perfect cookie. Chocolate Chip, Snickerdoodle, White Chocolate…yep, I’ve made them all hundreds of times. So coming up with new, and interesting cookie recipes over the last few years has gotten a little tougher. I have to get more and more creative…which is cool, I’m all about a challenge.
Anyhow, that brings me to today’s (delicious) recipe, Salted Honey Pistachio Cookies. I generally am a no-nut kinda gal…especially in cookies. I do make an exception from time to time, though. And pistachios are the perfect excuse to go nuts in.
These easy pistachio cookies are packed with flavor! I browned the butter, so there’s that. I also included coarse sea salt and honey to give them a different type of sweetness. AND white chocolate, because why not. You could also, certainly, use dark chocolate chips or semi-sweet chips in these cookies. Yes, totally.
When you brown the butter, just let it cool for a bit. You don’t want it to be piping hot.
And the coarse sea salt throughout the cookie adds little pockets of salty. If you don’t love this, go ahead and sub out the coarse sea salt for kosher salt.
Also, make sure not to over-bake these. The key to getting an extra soft cookie is to take them out of the oven slightly underdone and allow them to “carry over” cook on the pan for a few minutes on the baking sheet before cooking them on a wire rack.
I love the extra flavor the browned butter and honey give to these cookie to make them really unique!
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Salted Honey Pistachio Cookies
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 8 minutes
- Total Time: 38 minutes
- Yield: 36 cookies 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Description
Salted Honey Pistachio Cookies are soft, extra flavorful cookies made with browned butter, sea salt, honey and salted pistachios. This sweet and salty treat is easy to make, too!
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup chopped pistachios
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
- optional – flaked sea salt for garnish
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat melt the butter and bring to a boil. Stir or swirl pan consistently as the butter boils and begins to brown (about 5 minutes). It will turn a deep amber color. Remove from the heat and allow the butter to cool for 20-30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- When the butter is cooled add it to the bowl of your stand mixer, along with the brown sugar and granulated sugar. Mix on medium speed for 1 minute. Add in the honey, egg, vanilla, sea salt, and baking soda. Mix for an additional minute, until combined.
- Turn mixer to low and add in flour, mixing until just incorporated. Stir in the pistachios and white chocolate chips until evenly combined.
- Using a medium cookie scoop (2 tablespoons) drop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet about 2- inches apart. Bake for 8 minutes, or until the edges are lightly golden. Don’t over-bake.
- Allow the cookies to cool for 3-4 minutes on the baking sheet, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Sprinkle with flaked sea salt if desired.
Notes
The trick to keeping these cookies soft is to watch the bake time carefully. All ovens bake slightly differently, also the baking sheet you use can make a huge difference. I bake these for exactly 8 minutes in my oven, and the cookie gets slightly golden at the edges while looking slightly underdone on top. They will continue to bake as they sit on the hot baking sheet, so make sure to let them sit on the sheet for 4-5 minutes after you take them out of the oven.
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 152
- Sugar: 10.3 g
- Sodium: 107.5 mg
- Fat: 8.4 g
- Carbohydrates: 17.7 g
- Protein: 2.1 g
- Cholesterol: 19.7 mg
Keywords: healthy cookies recipe, easy cookies recipe, best cookies recipe, homemade cookies recipe, easy homemade cookies, homemade cookies,
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SO GOOD. I will be making these over and over again!
★★★★★
These cookies turned out SO delicious. I brought them to a family event and everyone loved them! The dough doesn’t spread much while baking, so when I baked the second batch I flattened out the dough balls before baking and they were perfect.
★★★★★
What is the capacity of the cups you should use here?
Good morning! I have made these several times….always a hit. Thoughts on converting to a bar recipe? Thank you!
I agree that this dog is excellent! I make a lot of cookies and I’m very excited about this. However, the dollar seems dry before I’m going to bake it here I just wondered if that is how it supposed to be or why would it do that? I’ve checked and rechecked and I put in all the ingredients as the directions stated. Thanks.
I’ve made these cookies a few times now and they are amazing! I was wondering if this dough can be frozen like regular cookie dough? The honey kind of makes me question whether it would be okay. Any thoughts would be most appreciated!
★★★★★
I had the same question – have you tried this (as Shelly hasn’t yet weighed in)?
Sorry about missing this! Yes it will be totally fine!!
I haven’t even finished baking these and I had to come on and comment. This dough tastes INCREDIBLE! Show stopper! I don’t even have to wait until they’re baked to know that they are going to be the best thing at the Easter table tomorrow!
★★★★★
Oh thank you so much! Enjoy!
Love this recipe so much! My husband always asks me to make pain chocolate chip cookies but now these are one of his favorites too. Thank you for adding another option to my repertoire 🙂
★★★★★
How would you alter the butter/sugar if you wanted to omit the chocolate chips?
I’ve had this recipe pinned for quite a while and finally tried it tonight. Oh my gosh I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on these for so long! They are delicious! I personally feel they’re salty enough without any salt on top. My husband never wants me to make anything other than my chocolate chip cookies but now he’s saying these are on his list too! Yay!!! Thanks for a new go to recipe!
★★★★★
So glad you liked these!!
Hello! I could only find dry roasted pistachios with sea salt. Will this work or should I leave out the sea salt that the recipe calls for?
I think those will be fine, but if you’re concerned about the salt add a little less to the dough, but I wouldn’t omit it entirely.
Thank you!
Do you measure your honey in a liquid or dry measuring cup?
liquid 🙂
Are you kidding me? Don’t change a thing. These are absolutely delicious!
Thanks for awesome recipe.
★★★★★
For this recipe I was wondering Do you use salted pistachios or unsalted?
I used salted but either will work 🙂
I normally am not the person to comment on blog recipes, but I have to tell you this cookie turned out amazing. The base was rich and paired well with the white chocolate and pistachios probably because of the honey and the richness of the browned butter.
I will admit I did add some semi-sweet cookies to couple of the cookies and again the base was so good it would work with other combinations. This recipe is now in my” definitely make again” folder.
★★★★★
Thank you so much for the review and a am all for adding some semi-sweet!!
What do you think about adding a tiny splash of rose or orange blossom water? The pistachio & honey combination has me thinking of the other traditional flavors in baklava, but I definitely don’t want to ruin the recipe lol. I feel like adding some cardamom too, just because I love the way it tastes in everything!
I think to be able to taste the rose or orange blossom water you might need to add so much that it would affect the texture and consistency if the cookie…but you could definitely add cardamom!
Made these today and they are the PERFECT combination of salty and sweet. This is my new favorite recipe of all time. I have been sharing my baking with lots of relatives (doorstep deliveries) over the last couple of months, but these will not be shared. (Well, maybe the next batch will.)
★★★★★
Love hearing that!!!
This may seem like a dumb question but can you make these without honey?
his recipe is written for the inclusion of honey, so to omit that you would need to alter the portions of the other sugars.
Can you make these without a stand mixer?
Yes 🙂