Nutella Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

These Nutella brown butter chocolate chip cookies are absolutely insane. Delicious. Indulgent. Incredible. Life-changing. They don’t last long. I promise you: From now on, you won’t make any other chocolate chip cookie recipe.

These cookies are made with brown butter and a sneaky Nutella® surprise. Brown butter and Nutella are a match made in heaven – they are meant to be combined and baked together!

5^th of February is World Nutella Day, so this recipe is what you need to make, people! And can we take a quick moment to give me a big round of applause: This recipe is the first-ever recipe to be posted on my blog, Crazy Kitchen! I loved baking, like, forever already, so it was time to stop making my friends jealous with photos and Instagram stories. I took action, and now here is the blog! Hello, fellow bakers!

Brown butter and Nutella

Brown butter is the life-changing ingredient in this recipe. It might seem like a little bit of an extra hassle, but it is so worth it. Honestly. Just plan an extra 30 minutes or be even smarter and prepare the brown butter the night before the day you think you might just crave these cookies (I anyway recommend preparing the Nutella the night before, so there you go).

Brown butter has a beautiful nutty flavour. The French even call it beurre noisette – basically “hazelnut butter”. So, it isn’t far-fetched to combine brown “hazelnut” butter with my favourite hazelnut spread Nutella! Later in life you will thank me for showing you this flavour-explosion.

Browning butter is quite simple, BUT you need to stick around your stove. Crank up the music and stir. Here’s why:

Instructions for browning butter

1. In a medium-sized pot, melt your butter on medium heat.
2. Once the butter has fully melted, turn the heat up to medium-high. Whisk every half-a-minute or so. The butter will start to foam a bit – that’s okay. Continue whisking. Please just don’t walk away from your stove, as the browning can happen quickly.
3. After latest 5 minutes, there should be brown flecks in your liquid. That is what you are looking for! You have just toasted the milk solids in the butter, which by now should smell nutty and like caramel. You might be tempted to give it a try – please don’t, the butter is hot! If there are no brown butter flecks yet, turn up the heat a little bit more.
4. Be careful NOT to overcook the butter. You want brown butter, not burnt butter.
5. Take the pot off the stove and let cool for about 5-10 minutes at room temperature. Pour the butter into a little glass bowl, making sure to scrape down the bottom and sides of the pan. You need all those brown flecks!
6. Place the glass bowl in the fridge for 15-30 minutes: you want very soft brown butter.

NOTE: If you browned the butter the evening before, make sure to leave the bowl out at room temperature 60 minutes prior to baking. If the butter still is on the colder side, melt half the brown butter in a pot, and pour it back into your glass bowl with the remaining cold-ish butter.

Some last-minute tips

So, now you know the most important thing already (how to brown butter is a crucial skill). Here are some more tips:

• I use corn starch in this recipe to make the cookies even chewier. Don’t worry, the outside is yummy, crispy and crinkly!
• Lemon juice is very acidic, so it also breaks the dough down and also makes for a chewier, yummy cookie.
• PLEASE chill your dough, if possible overnight or longer! Chill it up to 2-3 days in the fridge, wrapped in plastic wrap. You can freeze it, but I wouldn’t recommend freezing big batches. I would pre-scoop the cookies, wrap the scoops in plastic wrap (5 or so together) and place them in a Ziploc bag. Or just place all your scooped cookies onto a lined baking tray, wrap the tray in plastic wrap and put the whole thing in the fridge.
  Chilling the dough lets the flour absorb all that beautiful flavor and your cookies will be a lot puffier and, you guessed it, … chewier. I love chewy gooey cookies.
• Sprinkle a little bit of sea salt (I use Maldon’s) on your cookie dough balls right before you shove the pan into the oven. See next photo for salt-happiness 🙂

If you make these Brown Butter Nutella Cookies, please leave me a comment and rate the recipe! 🙂 And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram and Facebook.

Nutella Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 1 review

• Author: Joelle Warthmann
• Prep Time: 30 minutes
• Cool Time: 2 hours
• Cook Time: 20 minutes
• Total Time: 3 hours
• Yield: 16 cookies 1x
• Category: Cookies
• Method: Baking
• Cuisine: American

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Description

These cookies are made with brown butter and a sneaky Nutella surprise. Brown butter and Nutella are a match made in heaven – they are meant to be combined and baked together.

The cookies are yummy and chewy, but crunchy at the edges. Filled with Nutella and puddles of chocolate chunks, this recipe won’t disappoint!

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 200 g Nutella (or any other hazelnut-spread)
• 150 g brown butter
• 50 g butter
• 210 g light brown sugar
• 100 g white sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or sugar
• 2 large eggs (each about 59 g)
• 1 1/2 tbsp hot water
• 1 tsp espresso powder
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 350 g flour
• 2 tbsp cornstarch (each about 15 g)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 30 ml milk
• 40 g very dark chocolate (75-80%)
• 160 g dark chocolate (35-50%)
• sea salt (Maldon’s)

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Instructions

Preparing the Nutella

1. Place your 200 g of Nutella in the fridge for about 2 hours to firm up a bit. (to make life easier, just put your Nutella jar in there)
2. Place a small piece of plastic wrap or non-stick baking paper on a small baking pan. When your Nutella has firmed up, take two tablespoons and form little heaps of Nutella. The heap should be tablespoon-sized or weigh about 10 grams. Space these heaps evenly, so they don’t touch.
3. Place the pan in the freezer for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Preparing the brown butter

1. In a medium-sized pot/saucepan, melt your butter on medium heat.
2. Once the butter has fully melted, turn the heat up to medium-high. Whisk every half-a-minute or so until the butter starts to foam. Continue whisking.
3. After 5 minutes, there should be brown flecks in your liquid. Those are the toasted milk solids from the butter. The browned butter should smell all nutty and caramel-y. You might be tempted to give it a try – please don’t, the butter is hot! If there are no brown butter flecks yet, turn up the heat a little bit.
4. Be careful NOT to overcook the butter. You want brown butter, not burnt butter.
5. Take the pot off the stove and let cool for about 5-10 minutes at room temperature. Pour the butter into a glass bowl, making sure to scrape down the bottom and sides of the pan. You want all those brown flecks!
6. Place the glass bowl in the fridge for 15-30 minutes: you want very soft brown butter.
7. NOTE: If you browned the butter the evening before, make sure to leave the bowl out at room temperature 60 minutes prior to baking. If the butter still is on the colder side, melt half the brown butter in a pot, and pour it back into your glass bowl with the remaining cold-ish butter.

Making the cookies

1. In a bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the sugars and the brown butter liquid on medium speed. The mixture will be runny! Add the remaining butter that is at room temperature. Add the vanilla sugar or extract, and cream together until the mixture is light and fluffy (it takes about 5 minutes!).
2. While your butter-sugar mixture is creaming, chop your chocolate into chunks. I like to leave the very dark chocolate in small-ish chunks, so it makes gorgeous puddles of chocolate when baked. The normal dark chocolate should be chopped to the size of normal chocolate chips (if you are using dark chocolate chips, just skip this step).
3. On low speed, add the eggs one by one.
4. In the meantime, dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water. Pour it slowly into the mixing eggs. Add the lemon juice.
5. While mixing, combine the flour, salt, baking soda and corn starch in a separate bowl and whisk together. Then gradually add into the butter mixture. I recommend stopping mixing and adding a few tablespoons of your flour at a time. If you don’t stop the machine or at least have it running on low speed, you will have flour all over your kitchen. When about half of the flour mixture is added, pour in the milk. Continue adding the flour.
6. When the flour is almost fully incorporated, add the chocolate chunks (or chips). You don’t want to overmix the dough.
7. Make about 50g balls of dough. They don’t need to be that neat yet. Then you will flatten the dough balls, take a Nutella heap out of the freezer and place it into your cookie dough mold. Nutella tends to soften quickly, so I keep the Nutella pan in the freezer. Wrap the cookie dough around the Nutella, and form it into a nice ball, making sure there is no Nutella leaking. Place your filled cookie onto a lined baking tray. These cookies do spread, so be sure to leave enough room. Continue with all the dough.
8. When all your cookies are filled and formed into nice balls, put your baking tray in the fridge for at least 2 hours, preferably over-night! You can skip this step, but your cookies won’t be as chewy and the overall flavor will be less-developed …
9. Preheat your oven to 160° C (fan-assisted ovens, otherwise 180° C or 325° F or 350° F, if not fan-assisted). Before putting your tray in the oven, sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on each cookie dough ball.
10. Your cookies should bake for about 17-20 minutes. They will brown a little bit at the edges. You can always pop the tray back in the oven if you feel like the cookies need to be crunchier.
11. Once baked, let the cookies sit on the tray for 5 minutes, and then move them onto a cooling rack. And that is it! Pour yourself a glass of milk, take a seat and indulge.

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Notes

• If you run out of Nutella heaps, you can bake these cookies without the Nutella surprise! They are just as delicious!
• I haven’t tried this recipe without the corn starch. If you leave it out, your cookies probably will be a bit crunchier. DO let me know in the comments!
• If you want, you could even make 60 gr or 70 gr cookies! But then I would fill each cookie with about 15 grams of Nutella.
• If you are a real nutty person (pun intended), you could add some roasted hazelnuts, walnuts or macadamia. Yummy! See this link here (Salted Butter Shortbread Cookies) on how to roast nuts!