This cookie is nothing fancy to look at. But you just might want to brace yourself as its powerhouse of chocolate flavor is sure to floor you.

It’s hard to believe there are only three — yup, count ’em — tablespoons of cocoa powder in the entire batch of cookies.

You’d swear with a chocolate taste this intense that I dumped the entire can of cocoa powder in there, and then some.

But nope, it’s just that little bit along with 1/4 cup of pulverized cocoa nibs that makes these treats taste like a deep, rich cup of hot cocoa in cookie form.

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The taste of these crisp yet tender cookies is a little elusive.

There’s a roasty flavor, almost of mocha or coffee.

There’s a whisper of boozy complexity.

And there’s a quick, very subtle hit of chocolate that comes and goes in a blink.

These Nibby Pecan Cookies are from “Bittersweet” (Artisan) by chocolate doyenne, Alice Medrich.

They get their distinctiveness from toasted pecans, a dash of real bourbon and a heap of cocoa nibs.

If you’re a newbie to nibs, they’re a fun ingredient worth exploring. Nibs are small broken shards of roasted, shelled and cracked cocoa beans before they fully become chocolate. They are unsweetened and very crunchy, with a pleasant bitterness like a fine Italian espresso. Sprinkle them on green salads for a new-wave topping. They’re great for baking, too, because they retain that appealing, teeth-grinding crunchiness.

For these cookies, I used a sample of Amano Artisan Chocolate’s Barlovento Roasted Cocoa Nibs (a 6-ounce bag is $10.95) Made of beans from the Barlovento region of Venezuela, the nibs are rich and nuanced.

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