I start to drink coffee in earnest when I graduate from college. At my first job—as an intro-level advertising associate—I caffeinate like a real New Yorker: like a ritual, like sustenance as useful as dinner. I take the elevator up to the 20th floor of a sprawling, faded building smack in the middle of Times Square and drop my bag, stuffed with running shoes and a dog-eared novel and tangled headphones, onto my desk. I quickly make my way past rows of open cubicles to my friend Caroline’s desk: identical to mine with its jumble of candy-colored pens and tubes of chapsticks and piles of paper all askew, printed with months’ worth of status reports, their rows of Excel data marching endlessly across the white pages.
Wordlessly we make our way to the elevator and reverse our commute back down to the lobby, past the turnstiles, past the receptionist, past the streams of people rushing into the building to start their workday. We push open the heavy glass doors and are greeted with a whoosh of hot humid air in the summer and a frigid blast of cold in the winter. We turn left and immediately duck into the tiny coffee shop that’s tucked into the ground floor of our building. The line snakes around the shop; we quickly assess the timing. We can tell, to the minute, how long it’ll take—a skill honed by daily visits, and one that proves indispensable when you only have 14 minutes until your next meeting.
Every morning we order the same thing: a venti latte for me—skim milk. A grande for Caroline with an extra shot. She adds raw sugar to hers; I add three Splendas to mine (why yes, I do now find this repulsive too, thank goodness my tastes have matured with age).
If I tasted that drink now—the bitter edge of the dark roast tempered by the hot milk and faux sweetener, combining to give it all a melted-ice-cream quality—I’d be right back there: feeling the pinch on my left foot from my gray suede ballet flats, the smell of exhaust and fried food that settled like a fog over the Times Square subway station, the buzz of sirens and traffic and thousands of chattering tourists. I’d picture Caroline: her blond hair loose and straight around her face, her hands rhythmically pulling the charm on her silver necklace left right left as she talked animatedly about her latest date, her current roommate drama, her marathon training. Her parents. A work deadline. Whether to celebrate her birthday at a new bar in Williamsburg or the Standard Biergarten. Stories that felt pressingly urgent then and now seem like wildly luxurious things about which to worry and on which to fixate.
Those mornings seem like a lifetime ago, but I can recall pieces of them in such vivid detail that it’s as if no time has passed, instead of ten years and a yawning chasm of history over which we’ve crossed—never to return.
Before this time, I’d only dabbled occasionally in the world of coffee—in college, I’d sometimes treat myself to a Starbucks peppermint mocha during winter, cupping the paper mug between both hands as I walked through the swirling snow from town to my American history class held in one of the dark, cavernous lecture halls at the top of campus.
During my junior year abroad in South Africa, we drank black coffee laced with shots of Amarula, a Baileys-like liqueur made with cream, sugar, and the fruit of the Amarula tree.
I never drank real espresso: the single shot servings as dark as motor oil and strong enough to taste thick in your mouth. I’m just as happy with tea as I am with coffee, and I find myself largely unaffected by caffeine, turning to it only for comfort and ritual.
But coffee in desserts? That I can get behind.
Coffee ice cream. The mocha popsicles with rich, fudgy centers we kept in the laundry room freezer in high school. Chocolate-covered espresso beans by the handful in college. Espresso Rice Krispie treats, the buttery marshmallow mixture swirled with ground coffee. Tiramisu and affogato and cappuccino cheesecake and mocha brownies.
And one very favorite espresso recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan—queen of cookies—and is definitely on the sophisticated end of things. It’s a version of her excellent sable recipe (she has many, all of which are fantastic). A sable is a sturdy shortbread-like cookie; rich and buttery, it’s a good canvas for strong flavors like espresso and bittersweet chocolate.
I’ve slightly tweaked her recipe over time, skipping the cinnamon and adding a splash of almond extract.
It’s by baking my way through Dorie’s sable recipes that I learned how to make perfectly uniform cookies. She has you roll the dough into long logs, chill them, and then slice them. But then, instead of baking them freeform (since they tend to get squished as you slice them), she instructs you to pop each slice into the well of a muffin tin. The walls of the tin help keep the shape round and precise as the cookies bake; you simply pop them out with a knife after they’ve cooled for a few minutes.
These are pretty and elegant—ideal for gifting as they’re easy to package and won’t crumble or break.
Bittersweet Chocolate Espresso Sables
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan
1 1/2 tablespoons instant espresso
1 tablespoon boiling water
1 cup (2 sticks, 226g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (80g) confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/4 cups (270g) all-purpose flour
2/3 cup (113g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Dissolve the espresso in the boiling water.
Beat together the butter with the sugar and sea salt until fluffy. Add the vanilla, almond extract, and espresso/water mixture and beat to combine.
Add the flour and mix until the dough just comes together, then fold in the chocolate.
Divide the dough in half and roll each half into a long log, about 2” around. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours, or freeze for an hour.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter or grease the wells of two muffin tins.
Remove the logs from the fridge (or frozen, let them come almost to room temp before slicing) and slice into rounds.
Place the rounds into the bottom of the wells of the muffin tin (this helps them keep their shape), and bake for 15 to 18 minutes. Pop them out of the muffin tin and let cool on a wire rack.