Spumoni Cookies
Do you know about the magic of spumoni? One of the most underrated ice cream flavors, it’s a triple threat of chocolate, pistachio, and cherry ice creams. I love spumoni for the rich bitterness of chocolate, the slight salt of pistachio, and the floral sweetness of cherry. Since it’s Cookie Season, I wanted to use the flavors of spumoni ice cream in a cookie! These spumoni cookies are jammed with pistachios, maraschino cherries, and two kinds of chocolate! In cookie form, the trifecta of ice cream flavors can be shared with family and friends in a more portable, less likely-to-melt format.
Ingredients for Spumoni Cookies
To make these cookies taste like spumoni ice cream, we’re going to employ the three crucial ingredients: chocolate, maraschino cherries, and pistachios. I used raw pistachios here, but you could likely also use roasted nuts. Just be careful not to grind them so long that they turn into pistachio butter! You want to grind them just enough to form a fine pistachio meal. This recipe calls for both milk and dark chocolate, which I find gives a good balance of sweetness and bitterness. Feel free to adjust the ratio to your tastes. Remember, the cherries will also add a good bit of sweetness! Speaking of maraschino cherries, I find mine in at the end of the freezer section, near the ice cream.
Tips for Recipe Success
There are a few things to note about this recipe to make sure you have the most success with your spumoni cookies. First, this recipe calls for both all purpose flour and bread flour. Bread flour contains more gluten protein than all purpose flour, which helps make your cookies chewy. If you don’t have bread flour, you can substitute it for an equal quantity of all purpose flour. The spumoni cookies will still be delicious, if a little less chewy.
Secondly, these cookies have a tendency to spread into strange-ish shapes while baking! Since they’re full of fun mix-ins, they can spread a little unpredictably. Feel free to leave them au naturale, or scoot them into rounds using a cookie cutter or glass. Erin Clarkson, queen of the cookie scoot, demonstrates here.
Lastly, the recipe will instruct you to reserve a little extra pistachio and chopped chocolate. You’ll press the reserved chocolate into the tops of the cookies before baking to get glossy, photogenic pools of chocolate. A sprinkling of reserved pistachios will go on top of the cookies post-bake, along with a whole maraschino cherry.
Recipe Perks
In addition to tasting delicious, these spumoni cookies are also a breeze to whip up. Like most of my cookie recipes, these can be made in one bowl. They also use melted butter so there’s no need to cream the butter-sugar mixture; just do a little stirring with a spatula or spoon! As a final bonus, these spumoni cookies don’t require any chill time. so you can have cookies in under an hour.
The inspiration
- Spumoni ice cream (no surprise there)
- My Customizable One Bowl Cookies, which are the basis for these cookies
The Quick Look
| Components | Source/Adapted From | |
| 1 | Spumoni Cookies | Lanibakes Customizable One Bowl Cookies |
Spumoni Cookies
Ingredients
- 90 grams raw pistachios divided into approximately 70g and 20g
- 110 grams unsalted butter, melted
- 150 grams sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 100 grams all purpose flour
- 68 grams bread flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 90 grams milk chocolate, chopped divided into approximately 80g and 10g
- 30 grams dark chocolate, chopped divided into approximately 20g and 10g
- 90 grams maraschino cherries, drained and chopped
- 12 whole maraschino cherries, with or without stems
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350F.
- Using a small food processor or spice grinder, blitz 90 grams of pistachios until they are ground to a fine meal. It's okay if a few larger chunks remain, but you want most of the nuts to be in small pieces, like almond meal. Set aside. You will use 70 grams in the dough and the remaining 20 grams to top the cookies after they bake!
- In a medium-sized bowl, combine 110 grams melted butter and 150 grams sugar. Mix until they're combined.
- Add 1 egg and 1/2 teaspoon salt to the bowl and stir to combine.
- Add 100 grams all purpose flour, 68 grams bread flour, 70 grams ground pistachio, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda to the bowl. Stir to combine, stopping when the dry ingredients are a little more than halfway incorporated. Streaks of dry ingredients will still remain.
- Add the chopped maraschino cherries, approximately 80 grams of milk chocolate, and approximately 20 grams of dark chocolate to the dough. The remaining chocolate will be used to top the cookies before baking.
- Fold the mix-ins into the cookie dough until they are well combined and all the dry ingredients have disappeared into the dough.
- Use spoons or a large cookie scoop to divide the dough into 12 balls. Each dough ball will be about 60 grams.
- Press pieces of the remaining chocolate into the tops of the dough balls. Go for a mix of dark and milk on top of each dough ball!
- Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Place 6 dough balls onto each cookie sheet, leaving as much space between them as possible.
- Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes, rotating the baking sheets halfway through the bake to ensure they cook evenly. The cookies will be golden at the edges and still soft in the center when they are finished baking.
- Right after removing the cookies from the oven, you can use a large cookie cutter or glass to scoot the cookies into a perfectly round shape.
- While the cookies are still warm, press a maraschino cherry into one of the chocolate pools on each cookie.
- Sprinkle a bit of ground pistachio on top of each cookie.
- Let the cookies cool completely on the baking sheets before transferring them.
- Cookies can be stored at room temperature, covered, for up to 1 week. They will stay soft for days!
Delicious recipe. Moist, love the flavor combo.
Thanks so much Mary, I’m glad you liked them!
Some of the best cookies I’ve ever made!! Will definitely be a new go-to – they’re perfect. I did add a tiny bit of almond extract to up the cherry notes. Delicious
I’m so glad you enjoyed them! Adding almond extract is a brilliant move.
These cookies take me back to my youth when I would get spumoni ice cream. I didn’t have any milk chocolate so subbed white, which worked beautifully. This is an outstanding and very special cookie.
This makes me so happy! I’m so glad you enjoyed them.
I made these vegan using Miyokos butter and Just Egg. They turned out deliciously!
Amazing!
I forgot to add that I used Enjoy Life rice milk baking morsels and dark chocolate morsels.
A new holiday favorite! Crisp edges, ultra chewy, buttery and all the flavors of spumoni ice cream! The dark chocolate, milk chocolate, maraschino cherries and pistachios balance each other nicely.
I’m so glad you enjoyed them!
So delicious! I made them exactly as written except I used a smaller scoop so I got 18. The flavor was amazing, sweet and fruity and nutty!
Loved these! So delicious and fun to make. Personally, I would have loved bigger pistachio chunks and more cherry. Depends on your preference, but these were great!
I made these for Christmas, and they were beautiful and very tasty. I only had salted pistachios so I only used about 60 grams total because I didn’t want them to be too salty, but they probably would have been good with the full amount even with the salt.
I’ve made both the OG recipe and my GF/DF mod. These are INCREDIBLE. As you requested, gluten free and dairy free substitutions:
Earth Balance for butter
Dairy free chocolate chips for all chocolate chips
Flour: you surely could do a premade 1 for 1 blend. But if you want to mix your own: *45g sorghum flour, 45g oat flour, 60g tapioca starch, 20g potato starch, 1 tsp xanthan gum.
*The eagle eyes will notice that there is a little more flour than the OG recipe. The more flour you add, the more cakey the cookies, but also the less brittle for these weak binding gluten-less flours*
I let my batter rest 15 mins after mixing because GF flours draw up moisture and it makes it a little easier to work with, but yes, the dough is a sticky mess and unless you want cakies, just go with it. (I did cakies, too, and they also quickly disappeared…) They’ll all turn out. Don’t sweat! You def have to let them cool on the pan – gluten-free structure requires patience!
absolutely fantastic cookies! I love a one bowl recipe and these come together very quickly once everything is chopped. I recommend leaving the chopped cherries in relatively big chunks because I ended up liking those bits the best! I’m already planning to make these again 💞
A perfect cookie. I love the flavors – spumoni is super nostalgic for me, but this cookie is better than any ice cream I’ve had. The texture is also ideal – chewy, buttery, and peppered with chocolate chunks. Thank you for this recipe!
Has anyone had luck making these through step 11, then freezing and baking later?
Hi Elizabeth, I’ve never done it but am sure you could freeze the cookie dough balls and bake them later. They’ll need a few extra minutes to bake from frozen, and may not spread quite as much. They’ll still be delicious though!
Lani, do you chill the dough before baking? I feel like they’re gonna puddle with the melted butter if I don’t ;_;
Hi Wendy, I do not chill the dough and have had no issues with puddling. You’re welcome to chill the dough before baking if you prefer, but they will not spread as much.