Thursday, February 23, 2012

At Home: Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of Keith's favorite flavors is chocolate hazelnut.  So for his birthday this year, I decided to make a dessert to go along with the dinner that I also planned.  I searched the interwebs for some inspiration and stumbled upon a few recipes for a cookie with Nutella in it as another dessert feature of What Micky Eats...At Home.

Nutella, manufactured by the Italian company Ferrero, was introduced on the market in 1963 and is a delicious chocolate hazelnut spread available in most grocery markets today.  It is pretty popular in Europe and is great to spread on toast, use in crepes, or melt on top of ice cream.  We have a large jar in our cupboard, right next to my peanut butter.  I modified several different recipes to use what I had on hand. Makes 24 cookies.

Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ teasp ground cinnamon
  • ¼ teasp baking powder
  • ¼ teasp baking soda
  • ½ teasp of salt
  • 4 Tbsp unsalted butter (½ stick), room temperature.
  • 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/3 cup light brown sugar
  • 2/3 cup Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread)
  • 1 teasp vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

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- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
- In a mixer, cream the butter*, granulated sugar and brown sugar together. Add the eggs and vanilla.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the batter, mixing well after each addition.
- Add the Nutella and mix briefly, swirling the Nutella throughout the dough. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Drop the dough by the tablespoon onto prepared baking sheets. I use a medium size cookie scoop.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes until the bottoms of the cookies have just started to turn brown.
- Allow to cool for 2 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
*I originally used melted butter, but received a tip to cream the butter instead, so I amended the above directions slightly.

I mistakenly crowded all pieces onto one cookie sheet, which produced one large blob that I cut into squares.  Woops!  Other recipes call for unsweetened cocoa, which probably would have made them a bit darker brown in color.  Even without it, the chocolate hazelnut flavor was spot on.  The Nutella spread also made the dough a smoother consistency.  I was worried that they weren't cooked all the way through, but once you take them out to cool, they harden up a bit and come out like a cookie-brownie hybrid.  Even though they didn't turn out that pretty, they were still quite tasty and Keith was a happy camper.  Not bad for another edition of What Micky Eats...At Home.

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