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!
Ingredients
Scale
- 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)
Instructions
Preparing the Nutella
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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)
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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.
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Place the pan in the freezer for at least 3 hours or overnight.
Preparing the brown butter
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In a medium-sized pot/saucepan, melt your butter on medium heat.
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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.
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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.
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Be careful NOT to overcook the butter. You want brown butter, not burnt butter.
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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!
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Place the glass bowl in the fridge for 15-30 minutes: you want very soft brown butter.
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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
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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!).
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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).
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On low speed, add the eggs one by one.
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In the meantime, dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water. Pour it slowly into the mixing eggs. Add the lemon juice.
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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.
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When the flour is almost fully incorporated, add the chocolate chunks (or chips). You don’t want to overmix the dough.
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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.
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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 …
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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.
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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.
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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.
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!
