Chewy White Chocolate Cardamom Cookies

and some philly bites!

Oh hey!! First thing’s first, I’ve been really enjoying building a closer relationship with you all on substack. Please feel free to message/DM me with any questions as you’re baking - it thrills me to feel like I’m in the kitchen alongside you!

Second thing’s second, my mono abated a bit this week, and I got to spend a lovely weekend in Philly with one of my best friends since childhood!

From left to right: Pop's Buns, buying old Cook's Illustrated at Giovanni's Room, the biggest cakes I've seen at 4th St Deli

Some Philly food highlights:

• A bangin’ cinnamon roll at Pop’s Buns. It was a no-frills, classic, delicious cinnamon bun, that you could tell was baked with love. The staff was really warm and friendly, too.

• A MASSIVE turkey Reuben at Famous 4th Street Deli. A great touch? The deli gave us chocolate chip cookies with our check (right about the same time I was ogling their also huge slices of cake). Truly more restaurants need to give little touches like that?? It makes me feel like I just had a meal with family and increases my desire to return tenfold.

• A lovely dinner at Spice Finch. The tahini brownie with ice cream was a big standout. It was a thin, molten brownie, with an extra crispy top and subtle nutty tahini flavor throughout. I might need to try making my own at home for us all!

Recommendations

• 📱Clearspace: An app to reduce your use of, well, apps. I’ve been using it for a year now, and not to be dramatic but it changed my life. The premise is that it increases the friction of opening an app, so you’re not just constantly grabbing your phone and somehow ending up on TikTok or in a political doomscroll for an hour. You can add limits for one app for free, and more apps for like $30 if I’m remembering correctly. Thank you to

  Michael Easter
  for turning me on to this!!

• 📺Silo: I know we’re all deep in Severance and White Lotus, but don’t sleep on Silo. I’ve watched more tv than usual during my 5 month-stint of mono, and this post-apocolyptic show gripped me so much that I’ve started to read the books. It’s about a future society, forced to live underground due to toxic air conditions, and what happens when some curious individuals challenge a governing body bent on maintaining the status quo. Hunger Games vibes for sure.

• 🍳 Algae Cooking Club: I’ve been a big fan of algae since reading Eat Like a Fish, a memoir from one of the pioneers of regenerative ocean agriculture. Algae is a health and environmental powerhouse (it removes a TON of CO2) so I’ve been trying to add it into my kitchen more. Algae Cooking Club has some drizzle oils that are tasty, but my favorite is their high-heat cooking oil. I’ve been using it instead of canola or olive oil to roast, and can’t get enough of it. And it does not taste like the sea, for those concerned!

This week’s recipe

Cardamom has a warm, citrusy and slightly floral and herbal flavor. It’s a key spice in masala chai, so it gives off that warm flavor. It is perfectly at home in these super moist and chewy cookies with pockets of creamy white chocolate.

What really excites me about these cookies is the way all the ingredients in the cookies balance the cardamom and white chocolate. Since reading Ina’s memoir, I’ve been thinking more about how she uses different bitter and acidic ingredients to balance out a recipe. So I took a note out of both Ina’s book, and

Justine Doiron

with this recipe.

I rubbed orange zest in the sugar a la Ina and used sour cream instead of egg whites a la Justine. Both of these ingredients balance the warmth of the cardamom and sweetness of the white chocolate, and they amplify the cardamom’s citrus and floral notes.

These chewy white chocolate cardamom cookies use mostly pantry ingredients, but you’ll likely need to bop to the store for a bar of white chocolate and cardamom pods. I prefer chopping up a bar of white chocolate to using white chocolate chips, since chips have stabilizers that prevent it from melting as well into the cookie.

I also highly recommend getting green cardamom pods (pricey but worth it) instead of already ground cardamom, to toast and grind and sprinkle on top of the cookies. They are MUCH more flavorful than pre-ground cardamom, but you can use that in a pinch, too. I’ve been saving my leftover cardamom pod shells and pouring my espresso over one pod in the morning to make cardamom lattes.

White Chocolate Cardamom Cookies

This is my first truly substack paid subscriber-only recipe! I’m planning on sharing recipes just for paid subscribers monthly or more. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you, it means the world to me. If not, it’s a huge way to support my work and empower me to continue to grow and bring the best possible recipes to you.

Makes 16 cookies (and easily doubles)