brown butter nutella cookies
For the holidays, we usually are in charge of the charcuterie. It’s my favourite pre dinner thing. But, I was told it was taken care of, and so we were to do the dessert. A’s not the baker of the family, so I decided I was going to take on the feet. He suggested apple pie and I said, yes, plus raised him a batch of Brown Butter Nutella Stuffed Cookies. It was totally selfish because I’ve been craving the cookies from the shop down the road that makes the best Nutella stuffed cookies, so I wanted to see just how easy (you know, just in case I happen to wanna do this again…) it would be to make these addicting little nuggets of yum instead of buying them every other week.
But I think one of the real reasons I wanted to do this was that I was completely afraid of failing at the pie and needed a win, so I thought cookies. But, I also wanted to prove something to myself. I wanted to prove to myself I could accomplish something unrelated to feeding my child, which seems to be the only thing I can do on my own, or at least it feels like it. In the past six months, since having Oscar, and juggling being on my own most of the time, making a proper meal or anything that requires more than mixing or spreading, or Uber Eating’s, has been next to impossible. I basically have been ordering in, uber eatin’ like a champ or being incredibly well taken care of by my husband when he is in town. I kept seeing all these new moms (of babes MUCH younger than Oscar) being like “baking this and that” as I was scrolling social media leading up to the holidays and it was giving me some mega anxiety that as a new mom, at the holidays, I wasn’t doing all the fun things I’d imagine I’d be doing, or what others were doing. As I say it often, comparison is the thief of joy and a sentence I try to remember often. When I think of the holidays I always remember when I was really little how my mom would bring us to her moms and all the grandkids would sit around in the kitchen helping with the cookies. We would make endless cookies. Chocolate chip cookies, shortbread, peanut butter cookies, black and white cookies, frosted snowflake sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, and the list goes on and on. I love baking and used to do it a lot too. I got kind of excited about this. Even though Oscar wouldn’t obviously know about these cookies, or that I stayed up way too late making them, I wanted to start a little tradition of baking at the holidays because making memories is what it’s all about.
I needed a win. There has been very little wins in my life lately. I needed to show myself that I could do this. And, spoiler alert, even though this Christmas was a disaster and making the cookies, for so many reasons not related to the actual cookies, was the hardest thing ever, they were a total hit.
Brown Butter Nutella Stuffed Cookies
1 cup unsalted butter 226g
1 cup Nutella 280g
1 cup brown sugar 200g
2/3 cup white sugar 135g
2 eggs room temperature preferred
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups + 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour 362g
2 teaspoon cornstarch cornflour in UK
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 oz semisweet chocolate bar very finely chopped 113g
sea salt for sprinkling
To begin, get a cookie sheet prepared with some parchment paper lined on it. Then drop spoonful gobs of nutella on the parchment paper. Place it in the freezer while you create the dough for the cookie.
Next, the brown butter. This was the first time I’ve made brown butter. A little intimidated of it but I got to say its not as hard as it sounds or its cracked up to be! Cut your butter into tablespoon sized pieces and place in a medium sized saucepan. Melt over medium heat.
Swirl and move the butter all over the pan until it starts to bubble and pop. Keep moving it and once it starts to darken, stops bubbling, and smells a little nutty, you are good to remove it from the heat and put into a heatproof bowl.
Now, you’ll start on the cookie dough. Preheat the over the 375F.
Line the cookie sheet with parchment paper.
In that bowl with the butter, add the sugars and stir well.
Stir in the eggs, one at a time. Then add the vanilla extract and stir.
In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, the cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until well combined.
Add your chocolate pieces (finely chopped) and store in the fridge for 20 mins.
Remove both the cookie dough and nutella and begin scooping the dough into spoonfuls, then press the nutella in, cover in more dough so you cant see the nutella and place on the cookie sheet.
Once its full with 2 inches apart from each other, place in the over for 12-13 minutes, or until golden brown.
Sprinkle with sea salt immediately. Place on a cookie sheet to cool. They’ll get sturdier as they cool.
Enjoy! xo