pistachio cookies for adventures with friends
Each year I forget, until the malaise lies thickly upon me, what a dead period the summer is in Paris, especially as we approach August but even increasingly in July. After May and even more so June — with its rippling heat, its streets filled with music and dancing, its daylight until 10pm, the work and social events stacked up before people leave, feverish and magical and chaotic at once — the grey humidity of July, devoid of all events and many of my friends, falls upon me each year with all the abruptness of being abandoned on a great and barren plain. For someone well adapted to stress and chaos but very poorly adapted to mundanity, the stillness each year while I count down the days until my own flight from the city is hard to bear. As beautiful as the sunsets over the Seine remain, and as much as the summer breeze seems to whisper to me through the full leafy trees “can this be enough?”, each year I cannot shake the feeling that a lot of the magic goes out with the tide at the end of June.
But while it lasted, what magic it was, this late spring and early summer. It was hot — at times almost unbearably so — for almost two months straight. I travelled a lot: to the Loire, to Normandy, to Marseille, and more recently to Brittany. Somewhere along the way, pistachio cookies became my leisure and travel snack of choice; I know we’ve passed peak pistachio now, but it remains one of the items in bakeries that tends to be vegan, don’t ask me why. Over the past few months I’ve snacked on them in the back of cars on road trips, windows down, sunlight streaming in, music playing, girly laughter. I’ve eaten them on trains, squished up close to my friends, backpacks on laps, sticky from a day hiking. I’ve eaten them on wet Normandy beaches, sunburnt yet damp from rain, crumbs falling onto wet sand, huddled with friends. I’ve squished them into endless handbags and backpacks, only to pull them out mid-journey, mid-trail, mid-walk, mid-field, mid-beach, crumbled and tatty, to break them in half and give the other half to a friend. I’ve equally eaten them on Parisian terraces, while pouring out my heart to a friend over iced coffee on sunny Sunday afternoons, or had them for breakfast with friends or colleagues after three hours sleep while we debriefed the previous evening of dancing and coming home with the sunrise. For that is what they are to me now: cookies for sharing adventures with friends, synonymous with friendship itself, laughter that is soul-deep, travel, dancing, and the closest thing there is to magic in this life. To a sense of taking each day as it comes, bright and hopeful, another small whisper on the summer breeze that joy finds you in the people and moments you don’t expect. The friends you had not met this time last year; the places you had never planned to go.
It isn’t long now until I myself leave for the summer. In the meantime, it is no longer hot, and I’m no longer busy, and life is a little duller. But in the grey stillness, I’ve had time to bake again. I’d never actually tried making pistachio cookies myself until very recently: there is never time, they are always hastily bought, on the way to the station, or the picnic, or the quai. But now I’ve finally had time. The magic will return, but in the meantime, perhaps that can be enough.
Ingredients
1/2 cup vegan butter, melted
1 cup pure cane sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
3 tbsp aquafaba
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup ground pistachios (I make this myself by blending 1/4 cup of raw unsalted pistachios in a blender or coffee grinder)
1/2 cup raw unsalted pistachios, roughly chopped
A few spoonfuls of pistachio butter (optional)
Method
Whisk together the melted butter, sugar, and salt until smooth. Add the aquafaba and whisk again.
Sieve in the plain flour, baking powder and ground pistachios and stir to combine. Finally, stir in the roughly chopped pistachios.
Place the bowl of cookie dough in the fridge and leave to chill for at least 30 minutes. This is so that the butter cools sufficiently that they don’t spread too fast in the oven.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
Scoop about a tbsp-sized amount of dough into your hand and form into a ball. Press your thumb into it to form a small well, and spoon in about a 1/4 tsp of pistachio butter into this, then close up the sides again. Repeat until all the dough is used up, spacing them quite far apart to give them space to expand.
Bake for around 10 minutes, or until slightly browned around the edges but still soft. They may not look cooked but if in doubt take them out, as a slightly under-cooked cookie is infinitely better than a slightly overcooked one. Leave to cool and then enjoy, or transfer to an airtight container where they will keep for a few days.