Soft, chewy cookies with a subtle pistachio flavor studded with melted white chocolate. These cookies are easy to make and even easier to eat!

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These pistachio pudding cookies are gorgeous — a lovely spring green just perfect for St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. They’re delicious too. We just can’t stop eating them around here!

Pudding cookies are one of those cookie recipes you should have under your belt. They’re beautifully soft with a melt-in-your-mouth texture. This recipe is for specifically pistachio cookies, but change the flavor of the pudding and you’ve changed the cookie. The buttery base shows multiple flavors off to perfection — and changing the mix-ins gives you even more options.

In short, this is a cookie recipe well worth making, in this form, or in any other.

What do I need?

Sugar: This recipe uses both white and brown sugar. The brown sugar is reduced from a standard drop cookie as it ruins the pretty green, but it’s still there for that delicious nutty flavor.

Butter: Unsalted butter is recommended for this recipe, but as with most cookies, I find that you can get a pretty darn good cookie out of margarine. When we were in … less comfortable circumstances, butter was out of the budget. Margarine does an excellent job standing in. We’re not ingredient snobs around here!

Vanilla: I recommend using clear vanilla* if you can get it. The brown of regular vanilla has the same effect as brown sugar — it changes the color of the cookies. It’s not a deal breaker, just a tip.

Egg

Pistachio Pudding: The star ingredient! A small box (3.4 oz) of pistachio pudding is all it takes to bring that gorgeously subtle flavor. This on its own will also make the cookies a light shade of pastel green. If you want a stronger shade, you can add a few drops of food coloring to enhance the green.

Flour

Baking Soda

Salt

White Chocolate Chips: These can actually brown while baking. There are two ways to fix this. First, you can use vanilla flavored chips in their place. My family actually prefers this as their sweetness contrasts with the nuttiness of the pistachio flavor. And they do come out perfectly white. Second, you can make sure that all the chips are inside of the dough while baking, and then press a few into the outside when you take them out of the oven.

How do I make pistachio pudding cookies?

Mix the wet ingredients: Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the vanilla and egg and mix them all well.

Add the dry ingredients: I know that the correct way to make cookies is to separately mix together the dry ingredients, then add them to the wet. You’re also supposed to sift and spoon your flour. Well, I’m a cooking heretic. I just throw everything into the bowl (including flour scooped with a measure cup) and hope for the best. Given that blue ribbons have been won using this method, I’m giving you permission to do the same. Just dump all those dry ingredients in together (flour, salt, baking powder, and pudding mix) and mix them until you have a nice cookie dough going on. Heck, you can just throw the chips in as well. It’s all going to the same place!

Refrigerate the dough: 30 minutes in the refrigerator is the difference between flat, crispy cookies that spread all over the baking sheet, and plump chewy cookies.

Bake the cookies: Roll the chilled dough into 1-inch balls and place on a greased baking pan or one covered with a silicone mat. I use the tall cookie trick I learned from Sally over at Sally’s Baking Addiction. You can see it about half-way down her post here. This ensures that I get thick cookies every time.

Underbake, then rest: The final secret to perfectly done cookies — underbake them by 1-2 minutes, then let them develop on the cookie sheet. The residual heat from the cookie sheet will continue to bake them gently, which leads to the perfectly soft cookie. You can tell when the cookies are ready to remove from the oven when the sides and bottoms are down — in this case, slightly browned — but the tops don’t look quite finished.

Eat! (self-explanatory, I hope!)

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