You might find this hard to believe, but until yesterday afternoon I had never, ever, not even once taste Nutella. I have friends who swear by the stuff, and who have threatened to end our friendship if I didn’t go out and buy some right then! I even have a few friends who have tried to force feed me some when I visit their house. The funny thing is, there is no reason I haven’t tried it. I like hazelnuts, and I absolutely have a thing for chocolate. I am simply stubborn, and didn’t want to jump on the Nutella bandwagon. Silly me. This stuff is amazing, and it absolutely begs to be in cookie form.

After my first bite, I turned to my trusty friend, the Internet for some recipe ideas. I settled on one from ambitiouskitchen.com.
Boy am I glad I did. These things are perfectly moist and fudgy on the inside, but still have that amazing slightly crispy texture when you first bite in.

The other reason I love this recipe, is the lack of ingredients. There are seriously only five ingredients.

Ingredients:

1 cup Nutella
2 tablespoons brown sugar (I used the good dark stuff)
1 egg
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
Coarse salt for sprinkling

That salt is uber important too folks, don’t skip the salt. It truly makes this cookie.

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350
2. Mix all ingredients except salt together. I used my stand mixer, but that probably isn’t necessary. I bet my six year old cold do it with a whisk.
3. When it is well combined and dough like place it into the freezer for ten to fifteen minutes.
4. Remove from the freezer and cookie scoop it into little balls. Mine was a tablespoon sized scoop. It worked perfectly. If you do to own a cookie scoop you should stop reading and go out and get one. There are you back? Great. Nothing ensures perfect cookies like a scoop.
5. When they are all the same size, they all cook perfectly together. And when they are all the same size your kids don’t fight over who gets the big one… I digress.
6. Place the scooped dough onto a cookie sheet and bake for about 8 minutes. Allow them to sit on the cookie sheet for about two minutes until they set. While you are waiting, generously sprinkle them with your salt. Make sure you get enough that each and every single bite has some salt.

These are the cookies that Santa will be getting this year.  And I must say, he is quite happy about that.

 

-Stephanie Wright