Looking for spice...in nutella-stuffed brown butter & sea salt chocolate chip cookies

Lately, I've been in the land of milk and cookies. (get it? get it?) All I think about are cookies. What I can put in them, on them, around them...you get it. I have found myself stuck in traffic more often than not lately, so I've got plenty of time to consider my cookie options...cayenne cookies, cheesecake cookies, toffee cookies (I'm starting to sound like that guy in Forest Gump. Cajun shrimp, boiled shrimp, shrimp stew...) So I decided on these nutella-stuffed brown butter and sea salt chocolate chip cookies. Now there's a mouth full (of cookies.) 

Allow me to just point out that up until very recently, I thought brown butter was butter mixed with brown sugar. I even told people that AND THEY BELIEVED ME. Turns out, brown butter is, in fact, NOT butter and brown sugar. Brown butter is the process of, well, browning butter. The proper term for it is "beurre noisette" which means hazelnut butter and makes me feel like a French woman without a baguette. The process of browning butter is not particularly difficult, however, it is a bit time consuming and the butter is incredibly easy to burn. Now, I'm no Paula Deen, but I do enjoy butter. Especially brown butter, as it has an intense nutty flavor. In order to learn the process, I turned to my favorite blogger in the whole wide world, Jessica. On with it, people (aka all of my invisible followers and very possibly Barack Obama.)  

I will warn you that these cookies get a bit messy. And by messy I mean you're going to get nutella every where and you're (like me) going to end up licking nutella off of something the entire time. I somehow ended up with nutella on my forehead, in my hair and I'm pretty sure in my bra as well. Which is why my first word of advice would be: keep your jar of nutella in the fridge until you're ready to use it!

For the cookies:

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup unsalted butter

1 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg + 1 yolk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbs plain greek yogurt

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

1 jar Nutella, chilled

coarse sea salt (for sprinkling on top)

To start, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl and set aside. 

Start on browning your butter, by placing one cup of cubed unsalted butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. It's important that you whisk your butter during the entire process, as it's incredibly easy to burn. The butter is going to start to foam, keep whisking until you see some browning happening at the bottom of the saucepan, and then remove from heat. But the key is to not forget what your favorite blogger (me) told you, keep whisking! Whisk until you smell a fairly strong nutty flavor, at which point transfer the butter from the saucepan to a bowl to prevent burning. 

In a separate bowl (sorry, lots of dishes to wash with this recipe) combine butter and sugars until thoroughly blended and then add egg, egg yolk, yogurt and vanilla extract. 

(horribly blurry photos and I just noticed my blinding nail polish matches the yolk)

Once all of the ingredients are combined, gently fold in the chocolate chips. 

Wrap the dough and place it in the fridge for two hours, or the freezer for thirty minutes. I'm insanely impatient so I paced around my kitchen for about an hour, and then stared at the nutella jar in the fridge for about another hour contemplating whether or not I should just eat the nutella with a spoon and make regular cookies. You'll be happy to hear I endured the two hour wait, and made these cookies for your viewing and my eating pleasure. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and in the meantime take 1 1/2 Tbs. of dough, roll them into balls and then flatten them out to place 1 Tsp. of nutella in the middle. 

Gently fold the dough over the nutella, and roll into a ball. Make sure to do this carefully, as you don't want any nutella to seep out of the dough. Place dough on a nonstick cookie sheet about 2 inches apart and gently flatten the tops of the dough balls. Cook for 9-11 minutes, and remove from oven. The cookies make look a bit undercooked, but believe you me..they are not!  Sprinkle sea salt on top and serve. They're gooey and warm and delicious. Aaaaand you'll thank me later.

Until my next adventure...

xx,

ronit

Looking for spice...in raspberry linzer cookies

It's cold. 

And I mean not like kind of chilly, I mean IT'S COLD. Since I refuse to bring out my winter clothing just yet, I've been walking around shivering for days without a warm coat. In fact, on my way to work this morning, I'm pretty sure I got a how-are-you-not-freezing-in-that!? look from a homeless women. Whom, might I add, was dressed far warmer than me. 

Back to the things that really matter: raspberry linzer cookies. Now, if you're thinking "what the hell does this have to do with spices?" well, let me tell you something. First off, it's my blog and I'll do what I want. Second, there are spices in these cookies! And they're delicious. And holiday-y and they make you(me) feel warm and fuzzy. 

Raspberry linzer cookies:

1/2 Cup sliced almonds

1/2 Cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts

2 Cups + 1 Tbs. all purpose flour

3/4 Cup granulated sugar

1/2 Tsp. baking powder

1/2 Tsp. table salt

1/2 Tsp. ground cinnamon 

1/4 Tsp. ground cloves

14 Tbs. chilled unsalted butter

1 large egg

1 Tbs. cold water

1/2 Cup raspberry preserves 

Confectioners sugar for dusting 

In a food processor, process almonds, hazelnuts and a 1/2 cup of flour until fine textured but not powdered. Avoid over-processing by occasionally stopping the machine to feel the nuts; (haha, I just said feel the nuts on my blog) they might still look chunky because they're bunching together. Add the remaining flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cloves. Pulse to combine ingredients. Chop up the butter into small cubes and add to the flour mixture. Pulse to combine until the mixture looks coarse and flaky.

Transfer the flour mix to a large bowl. Mix the water and egg together and then combine with the flour mixture. Mix gently to combine, and once combined - the flour should hold together when pinched. If it seems too dry, add a tiny bit of water. Gather the dough into two balls and knead for about a minute, just to blend. Wrap both balls in plastic (stop it, don't make me laugh) and let chill for about 2 hours. 

Once your dough is firm, remove from the fridge and generously cover your working surface with flour. Leave half of the dough in the fridge so that it doesn't get too soft to work with. Place the dough on your floured service and use a rolling pin to flatten the dough to about 3/16 inch thickness. Then, cut out as many 2 inch rounds as possible, re-rolling scraps to make more rounds. Shit got real when I realized I didn't have circular cookie cutters for the large rounds as well as the middle rounds. So, what did I do? Well, I used my measuring cup as a large round cookie cutter and the lid from a chocolate syrup for the little rounds. Aren't I resourceful? 

I can't stress enough how important it is to have a good amount of flour on your working surface when rolling/cutting the dough. Once you've cut your rounds, line them on baking sheets and place in the oven for 15 minutes at 325 degrees. Once they've baked, remove from oven and dust with confectioner's sugar. 

While the cookies are baking and then cooling down, remove the other ball of dough from the fridge and repeat the same process. However, since you're now making the bottom of the cookie, you won't need to cut a smaller round in the cookie. So just cut out an equal amount of 2 inch rounds and bake for 15 minutes. 

Once the cookies are baked and cooled, place about 1/2 tsp of raspberry preserves on the whole cookie rounds. Top with your sugar dusted cookies, bottom sides against the preserves. 

I ended up with 20 cookies, and will most likely make the cookies a bit smaller next time. The taste of the hazelnut and almonds with the raspberry preserve was absolutely delicious. The butter gave these cookies a bit of a shortbread texture, which I absolutely love. The cookies are warm, nutty, sweet and awesome for the holidays! If you're feeling in the baking spirit like I was, these would make a great dessert for any holiday dinner. Or in my case, an office meeting.

Until my next adventure...

xx,

ronit