My little sister will no longer eat Nutella, which is a real tragedy. She used to say she loved coming over to our house because we always had Nutella. Now, she won’t touch the stuff. She told me she was traumatized by an experience with Nutella, so I had to know what it was.
I was envisioning that maybe someone tried to hold her down and suffocate her by shoving Nutella in her nose. Or that she had an annoying coworker who ate Nutella in a really disgusting way, dipping his whole hand in the jar and slathering it over his tongue.
The real story is this. When she was in college, she asked her Then-Boyfriend (TBF) to make them some Nutella sandwiches while they walked to class. He asked her how many, and she was like, “Um, two?” So he made two sandwiches and they started walking. She had finished her sandwich and noticed that he wasn’t eating his and asked why. He told her he wasn’t hungry and had made both sandwiches for her. Not willing to waste a perfectly good Nutella sandwich, she forced the second one down, despite having no appetite.
I guess the combination of TBF thinking she was such a pig she wanted two sandwiches plus force-feeding them to herself has created a mental block against Nutella. To be fair, TBF’s assessment of the situation isn’t entirely ludicrous. We can really pack food away in my family. It’s the Siriano way to never say no to more food. (It is a deeply flawed way, but our way, nevertheless.)
So you can imagine how long these cookies lasted in my cookie jar. I don’t think I’ve sustained any psychological trauma from it, but only time will tell. Physical trauma, on the other hand… well. I’ll just have to eat a lot of kale to make up for all the cookies. Sorry, body.
CHOCOLATE NUTELLA CHIP & HAZELNUT COOKIES
- ½ cup (150 grams) Nutella (or other chocolate hazelnut spread)
- 2½ cups (300 grams) all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup (75 grams) cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (225 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 cup (210 grams) light brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon hazelnut liqueur
- ½ cup (150 grams) hazelnuts, chopped and toasted
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Fill a piping bag fitted with a small round tip (I used a Wilton #3 tip) with Nutella. Pipe chocolate chip-sized dots all over the parchment paper until the Nutella is used up. Freeze the tray for at least 1 hour.
- Set oven racks to the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Preheat oven to 325°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together butter and both sugars until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs and hazelnut liqueur and beat to incorporate.
- Gradually add dry ingredients and beat until combined. Stir in Nutella chips and chopped hazelnuts by hand with a rubber spatula.
- Scoop about 1½ tablespoons of dough per cookie onto prepared baking sheets, spaced about 2 inches apart. Bake for 16 minutes, switching the pans from back to front and top to bottom halfway through. Cool on pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer cookies directly to the wire rack to cool completely.
