These Pistachio cookies are made with real pistachio butter, spiced with bright orange zest and aromatic cardamom. They are so delicious and so easy to make. They have a wonderful and extremely special flavor profile that will transform your mood and elevate your everyday sweet moment.
Alright ladies and gents, ready for another pistachio recipe? Get your homemade pistachio butter ready, cuz today we’re making these super easy and extremely tasty pistachio butter cookies! The batter calls for both pistachio butter and ground pistachios to make sure you’ll get double the flavor. They bake up to a pretty green color, and they look just beautiful with a light dusting of powdered sugar.
Every time I make something with pistachio, I have to sneak in a little cardamom and orange – just like these pistachio cupcakes. Cardamom itself has citrusy character so it goes really well with orange zest. The flavor of these pistachio and cardamom cookies are just so lovely — no words can truly describe them.
Table of Contents
Why you’ll love these special cookies
If you’re not convinced yet to make these cookies, let me tell you again why you’ve got to make them today!
- So much pistachios! These pistachio butter cookies are not simply butter cookies with ground pistachio folded into the batter. They are actually made with real pistachio butter the same way you would make peanut butter cookies.
- Their beautiful color is natural – no pudding mix or food coloring here, the green color you see in these photos is all from the pistachio butter and ground pistachios. The greener your pistachio and pistachio butter, the greener these cookies will turn out.
- Unique gourmet flavor – the combination of orange, cardamom and pistachio makes these extremely special and unique. Everyone will love them!
Helpful tools
A stand mixer makes it easy to combine all of the ingredients in this cookie recipe but an electric hand mixer will work just as well.
I also like to have a kitchen scale on hand for exact measurements as well as when dividing up the dough. One batch should make about 18 dough balls, approximately 1 ¼ oz each.
Ingredients and substitutions
As always, you’ll find the complete list of ingredients and quantities in the recipe card at the end of this post. Below are some notes and substitution tips:
- Unsalted butter – gives you control over how much salt goes into the recipe but in a pinch you can use salted butter, just omit the salt called for separately in this cookie dough.
- Pistachio butter – this is the secret ingredient that gives these cookies an earthy, nutty, satisfying flavor. I use my homemade pistachio butter with honey but you can use either homemade or store bought.
- Light brown sugar – for a deep, rich sweetness and to keep the cookie soft and chewy. Dark brown sugar will work too and in a pinch you can use granulated sugar if brown sugar is not available. One reader also used coconut light brown sugar.
- Orange zest – adds a light citrusy flavor to your pistachio cardamom cookies. Tangerine or clementine zest will work too.
- Egg – binds the ingredients together to give you the perfect dough.
- Pure vanilla extract – while not the main flavor in this cookie dough, it adds complexity and enhances the other flavors and ingredients.
- Flour – all-purpose flour is best for this recipe.
- Salt – very similar to vanilla, salt enhances flavors and adds complexity to baked goods.
- Baking powder – gives the cookies a soft, delightful texture.
- Baking soda – promotes browning and helps the cookies to spread out to the right size.
- Cardamom – the secret spice for a unique warm and spicy note that pairs well with the orange zest and is just wonderful with pistachios. However, note that cardamom can be a very strong flavor especially if you’re using freshly ground cardamom, reduce the amount to just half or use as much or as little as you prefer.
- Ground pistachio – adds texture and even more delicious pistachio flavor. You can use raw, roasted unsalted, whole or slivered pistachios. I use my food processor to grind whole pistachios for this but a really sharp knife will do the job just as well. You can choose to grind it more finely or chop it a bit more roughly to add more texture to your pistachio cookies.
How to Make Pistachio Cookies
The following instructions, step-by-step photos, and tips are here to help you visualize how to make the recipe. You can always skip straight to the printable recipe card at the end of this post.
Combine the ingredients
- First, we’ll melt the butter and let it cool down before combining it with our pistachio butter along with brown sugar and orange zest.
- Second, we’ll add egg and vanilla and beat until the mixture is creamy and fluffy.
- Then, we’ll sift together our dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, baking soda and cardamom – and stir in the salt and ground or chopped pistachios.
- Finally, combine the dry ingredient mixture with the wet ingredient mixture to make our beautiful pistachio cookie dough.
Chill the dough
For the best results, I recommend refrigerating your dough for 30 minutes before you move on to dividing and rolling it. This will allow the dough to hydrate and let the flavor meld together. Just don’t forget about it because if you chill it for too long, the dough might harden too much and make it difficult to divide and roll.
Shape the dough
This cookie dough is very easy to handle, especially after chilling. You should be able to divide and roll it into balls without any issue. You should be able to get 18 dough balls, each about 1 ¼ oz.
An advantage of rolling the dough into ball is that you’ll end up with perfectly round and pretty cookies when baked!
Bake your cookies!
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Once ready, pop your baking tray into the oven for 11 minutes on the middle rack. No need to flatten the dough for these pistachio cardamom cookies — just let them spread on their own during baking.
When they’re finished, remove them from the oven and place the tray onto a wire rack. You’ll want to let the orange pistachio cookies cool for 5 minutes on the tray before moving them directly to the wire rack to continue cooling.
Tip: This step is optional, but you can sprinkle a little bit of powdered sugar on top of the cookies to add subtle sweetness and enhance their appearance even more.
More baker’s tips
- When to divide the dough – You can divide the dough immediately after mixing and then chill if you are not planning to bake them within half an hour, or if you are making them ahead. The unbaked dough balls will last in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
- Variations – Try this recipe as a base using other nuts, making your own nut butter for gourmet variations.
Storage
These cardamom pistachio cookies will last for 3 to 5 days at room temperature in an airtight container. A trick that I use to keep cookies fresh is storing them with a slice of sandwich bread. You can use a piece of parchment paper to separate the bread from the cookies or place the bread off to the side of the container so that they don’t touch.
For longer storage, you can freeze the baked cookies in an airtight container or freezer bag for up to 3 months. Or you can freeze the dough after rolling it into balls. If you are freezing the dough, flash freeze the dough balls first on a baking sheet with enough space between them so they don’t stick together. Once frozen solid, you can toss all of them into a freezer bag.
FAQs
Yes! We have some awesome readers who wrote in saying they were able to make substitutions to make these gluten free. One reader used King Arthur gluten free flour and another one used almond flour instead of all purpose flour and they were both successful!
While I haven’t used pistachio flour in this recipe, since others have tried gluten free flour and almond flour, I would venture to say pistachio flour should be okay to substitute.
However, if you’re trying to substitute pistachio flour just for the portion of the ground pistachios, that’s probably fine for the flavor but you won’t get a bit of crunchy texture from the larger pieces of pistachios since the flour will be very fine.
More pistachio recipes
- Pear Frangipane Tart (Pistachio)
- White Chocolate Pistachio Truffles
- Pistachio Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
📖 Recipe card
Pistachio Cookies with Pistachio Butter, Orange, and Cardamom
Equipment
Ingredients
- 4 ounce unsalted butter (1 stick, ½ cup, 113 g, melted and cooled)
- ½ cup pistachio butter (128 g)
- ¾ cup light brown sugar (firmly packed, 150 g)
- Zest of a small orange
- 1 large egg (room temperature)
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour (169 g)
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon cardamom (reduce to ⅛-¼ if freshly ground)
- ½ cup pistachio (70 g, roasted, ground or finely chopped)
Instructions
- Melt butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
- Combine flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cardamom, and ground pistachio in a small bowl and whisk to distribute evenly.
- In a stand mixer bowl, combined cooled melted butter with pistachio butter, brown sugar and orange zest, beat with the paddle attachment for 1 minute until combined.
- Add egg, and vanilla extract, beat for another minute until combined.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the liquid mixture and stir until incorporated.
- Refrigerate the cookie dough for about 30 minutes.
- Divide the dough into 18 portions, about 1 ¼ oz each. Roll into balls and refrigerate while you preheat the oven.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Place dough balls on a parchment lined cookie sheet about 2 inches apart and bake for 11 minutes in the middle oven rack.
- Remove from the oven and place baking sheet on a wire rack.
- Let cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before moving the cookies on to the wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
- You can use light or dark brown sugar for this recipe. In a pinch, granulated sugar will work too. A reader also substitute coconut light brown sugar with success.
- Readers have also made these gluten free using King Arthur gluten free flour and almond flour with success.
- You can divide the dough immediately after mixing and then chill if you are not planning to bake them within half an hour, or if you are making them ahead. You can keep the dough balls refrigerated for a couple of days.
- Cardamom can be a very strong flavor especially if you’re using freshly ground cardamom, reduce the amount in this case or use as much or as little as you prefer.
- Try this recipe as a base using other nuts, making your own nut butter for gourmet variations.
Nutrition
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Hello Trang!
I’m getting ready to make this recipe. I have one question, is the light brown sugar “firmly packed” or just lightly? Also, I noticed that in some of your other recipes have metric measurements and I thank you for that. Please do it for this one too.
Hi Ingrid, use firmly packed for brown sugar or use 150 g. As I go through and update older recipes I will update the measurements with metric, just lots I haven’t gotten to including this one. Hope this help, let me know if any other questions come up.
If I use white sugar instead, will it create a crunchy cookie (or is this a bad idea…too crunchy. Or dry, et cetera)?
You can use white sugar but yes it will be crunchier and not as chewy. It will be a little dryer but I think it will still be good. But if you like chewier cookies, I would stay with brown sugar.
Like one other person, I put 1/4 cup of butter for the 4 ounces. The cookies are a little dense because of that. The last five I baked separately, I flatten and they turned out better. The flavor is great! This is the first time I’ve used pistachio butter. I didn’t have pistachios to grind; so I put in ground pecans. It worked. I’ll make it again as I do have enough pistachio butter left.
Looks lovely it would be nice to have weights in ozs not cups for uk readers thanks
Hi Caroline, I’ve been trying to go through and add weights but it takes time to retest the recipes to make sure so I haven’t got to some of the older recipes yet. Thanks!
This recipe is so good and very easy. I substituted all purpose flour for almond flour and brown sugar for coconut light brown sugar. Amazing!
delightful….my new favourite recipe!
I made these, but had one problem, The butter is listed in ounces. I’m used to seeing it either in tablespoons or grams. I didn’t pay attention and the number looked reasonable for tbsp, so I added 4 tbsp, sadly that’s about 1/2 of what the recipe calls for (no wonder I kept thinking the batter was too dry). As a result, they didn’t spread and I’m not sure they cooked all the way through. While they didn’t turn out great, they were good enough I’m going to try them again, this time with enough butter
4oz butter is the same measurement as 8 tbsp, 1/2 cup, or 1 stick (at least for how it’s packaged in the US)
also I’ve never used ground pistachios, I bought whole pistachios (no shells) and ran them though the food processor, I now realize I probably should have blanched and de-skinned them first, I think that also affected the taste. Or maybe Pistachio flour is a good substitute? a link or more explanation for a slightly uncommon ingredient would be a nice addition. even a picture of the raw ingredients before they were added would have helped.
Thanks for your suggestions. Toasting the pistachio if they are raw before running them through the food processor would be a good idea to bring out their flavor, but if you get toasted pistachio, you can use them as is. I have not used pistachio flour before but I would imagine it to be very fine, which means the amount will differ. Though I prefer ground pistachios for a little more texture, I think it’s up to your preference and if you want to experiment with the flour.
It would be nice to have the option to have the recipes in the metric system! 🙂 – Just a suggestion
I mean, *also* in the metric system 😀
Certainly, I’ve started adding metric to newer posts and slowly going through older posts to add but it takes time since I have to retest everything to make sure the measurements are accurate. So it may be a while before all of the posts get updated, but I do get a lot of requests for this! 🙂
I made this with a King Arthur gluten free flour and they came out perfect! They are a real gourmet specialty cookie that anyone would love! Thanks!
Thank you so much! Happy to hear it works great with KA gluten free flour.
I made these cookies after searching on google. I had pistachio butter I wanted to use and love all things pistachio.
I am not a baker and its only the second time I have baked anything. The cookies are amaazing. Just perfect and easy to make for anyone. If I managed to make them then anyone can.
Thank you so much Norien! I’m happy to hear you made them successfully, keep on baking 🙂
I’m in love with these cookies. I used less sugar a little less than half a cup and it tastes awesome. I cover it with toasted coconut and drizzle little melted dark chocolate on top.
So glad you love them! The addition of coconut and melted chocolate sound fantastic!
Oh my gosh, SO GOOD!! My favorite cookie on my first try! I swapped the ground pistachios for more pistachio butter (since I made all my pistachios into pistachio butter), and I omitted the orange zest. I also skipped refrigerating, and I used vegan butter. They turned out so soft, chewy, tasty, and perfect! I could eat the cookie dough for days!
Thanks Andrew!! So glad you enjoyed these 🙂 🙂 🙂
Hello! Is the pistachio butter supposed to be the roasted and salted one, or the raw and unsalted one?
Hi Jackie, I used raw and unsalted pistachio to make homemade pistachio butter. If you’re getting a jar, definitely go with the raw and unsalted.
I had a just-expired (unopened) jar of Oro Verde Pistachio cream in my cupboard that needed to be used. It’s more of a Nutella-like texture than actual pistachio butter (nuts, sugar and some oil), maybe a bit thicker. I used the entire 180 g jar, but otherwise followed your recipe exactly. Not surprisingly, the cookies spread out more than the ones in your photos, but the texture and flavour were outstanding. I would make these again, using actual pistachio butter. Thanks for the recipe!
Excellent Hannah, great use of a substitution 🙂
Hi, this recipe sounds great, would love to try it, but it would be soooo much easier if you could provide the recipe amounts in weight (grams) rather than in cups and ounces…
Thank you very much x
Hi Majed, I’m really sorry but when I developed this recipe I took all my measurement in oz and cups. I do not have gram measurement available but you can always convert oz to gram weight, but cups are in volume (1 cup = 8 oz in volume or 237 ml).
I love anything with cardamom in it and I was very excited to try this recipe. I made these today for the first time and the first batch got burned at the bottom 🙁 I baked the second batch for 9 minutes, took out tray waited for a few minutes flipped the cookies and baked for another 3 minutes. After cooling, they are still a touch soft in the middle.
Hi Pavithra, I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. When I made these, I didn’t need to flip them at all. Oven temperature varies so that could be a problem. If it’s burning, I think your oven temperature may be a tad hotter than mine, try lowering it by 25 degrees and bake for the same amount of time. Another thing that may help is using an insulated baking sheet so the bottom doesn’t burn quickly.
I loved the flavor combinations. I’ll check my oven temperature next time but I don’t think it is that because I just baked french macarons for the first time and they came out fine. Are they supposed to be a little soft on the inside?
Your truly are the pistachio queen. I’ve been checking out all your pistachio recipes and I want to make them all – these cookies included. I love the addition of cardamom
Thank you my dear!