Melt in the mouth chocolate cookies, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, loaded with white and milk chocolate chunks and crunchy hazelnuts with hints of salt and vanilla. Just like a crunchy, chewy and crispy jar of Nutella!
Collect together your equipment (see Recipe Notes below) and ingredients.
Start making your cookies around 45 minutes before you want to cook them. The mixture is very soft and you need time to chill the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge.
Put the butter, salt and both of the sugars into a large bowl and using an electric whisk mix until fluffy. This should take 3-4 minutes.
Add the egg and vanilla extract/paste and continue to whisk until thoroughly mixed.
Add the flour, cocoa and baking powder to the butter mixture and beat until incorporated. Alternatively, fold in by hand. (NB Remember to sift the cocoa before adding.)
Fold in the chocolate chunks and hazelnuts until evenly mixed throughout. The dough will be soft and quite sticky at this stage.
Divide the dough into rough balls, (I use 30g/1 large tablespoon of dough per cookie) and place them, close together on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment. Roll gently into a neater shape. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes (or 15 minutes in the freezer) to harden a little.
Five minutes before you want to cook your cookies, preheat oven to Fan Oven 160°C/180°C/350°F/Gas 4 and line the baking trays with baking parchment.
Place the cookie dough balls spread out on baking sheets. Depending on the size of your baking sheet, I cook between 4 – 6 at a time.
Baking one tray at a time: bake for 10 – 12 minutes. (I cook mine for 11 minutes.)
Baking two trays at a time: add one minute to the total time to cook. Bake for half this time and then quickly swap the trays over i.e. put the top tray on the lower shelf and the tray from the lower shelf and on the higher shelf and cook for the remaining time.
(So for one tray I cook for 11 minutes and 2 trays for 6 minutes, swap the trays and then another 6 minutes = 12 minutes on total.)
The cookies are cooked when: they have spread out, are starting to crisp slightly on the edges and look ever so slightly underdone. They should still be soft in the middle. Let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.
Equipment:
Freezing Cookie Dough Balls:
If you want to freeze any dough balls, prepare as above until the end of point 6. Simply lay baking parchment on either a baking tray or a chopping board and lay out your dough balls, not touching. Cover with cling film and place in the freezer. As soon as they are solid, they can be transferred into labelled freezer bags or containers.
Cooking from frozen: allow 1 – 2 minutes extra cooking time.