merrifood

Nutella chocolate chip cookies with a twist

Posted by merrifood on December 13, 2012 · 1 Comment 

So when I made the nutella sea salt cookies the other week, I obviously bought way too much nutella so then had to make another recipe involving this succulent ingredient.  What a shame.  I do not even know which one of these cookies I liked better because I enjoyed them both so much.  This one is definitely a bit more time intensive and trickier but man are they worth it.  I made them to bring back to the team in Manila and it’s good I made a bunch, because I had two packages of them wrapped in foil in my bag and after my 8 hour flight one of the packages may have mysteriously disappeared.  What can I say, it was one of those rare daytime flights where I wasn’t sleeping and instead was just watching superhero movies.  And superhero movies and these cookies go really well together.  These cookies would go really well with pretty much anything actually, from a glass of milk to more of these cookies.

Nutella chocolate chip cookies with browned butter and sea salt (adapted from Cooking Classy)

Ingredients (makes about 25-30 cookies)

1 cup / 225 g butter
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup milk chocolate chips
about 2/3 cup Nutella, chilled (put it in the fridge when you start the recipe)
sea salt flakes

Instructions

Brown butter in a medium saucepan.  For the specific way to do this (it’s really not hard) refer to my browned butter sugar cookies recipe. Once the butter is all browned and smelling delicious, take it off the heat and put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes so it can properly cool down (I typically just leave it in the pot and put it on a potholder).

Once it’s cooled, add the brown sugar to it and blend until well combined.  Add in the vanilla extract and then add in the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.  Then add in the dry ingredients (salt and baking soda first, followed by lour).  Slowly add in all the flour until it forms a soft dough.  Then mix in the chocolate chips.  Cover the bowl/pot with foil or plastic wrap or take out the dough and wrap it in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 180 C / 350 F degrees. Remove dough from refrigerator and scoop out balls of dough and shape them into balls.  Place them on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper (if you don’t have that you can lightly grease the cookie sheet).  Then flatten each ball until you have a circle.  Place a little dab of the chilled Nutella in the centre of the circle.  (ideally the circle should be about 6 cm / 3 in in diameter) Then carefully fold the dough up and around the Nutella, attempting to cover the Nutella entirely.  If the Nutella leaks out plug with a chocolate chip or take a bit more dough from the bowl.  Leave room for the cookies to spread, so I just had about 10 per sheet.  Bake for about 10-12 minutes.  Halfway through, when the cookies are still all gooey, I recommend removing the tray from the oven and sprinkling them with sea salt.  You can do this at the end too but I find that it bakes into the cookie in the most delightful way if you do it halfway through baking.

Attempt to curb your enthusiasm and allow them to cool for a few minutes.  Although as with most cookies these do taste best when they are still slightly warm, they are honestly incredible when fully cooled as well.  (I repeat: do not bring a large amount of them onto a plane.)

Browning the butter

Adding the flour to the browned butter and sugar mixture

Chilled dough ready to go with some nutella!

Cookie making in process – putting the little bit of nutella in the center of each cookie

Ready to be put in the oven

Finished product sprinkled with that lovely sea salt

Packed up and ready for a little plane ride

So basically, you really must make these cookies if you have some nutella on hand.  They have FOUR of my most favourite elements of classic Merri baking: nutella, chocolate, browned butter, and sea salt.  How could they not be amazing?