I'm pretty sure that every time I make a new cookie recipe, it immediately becomes my favourite cookie.
This inevitably happens with chocolate chip cookies and, even though I am still very much a fan of the Heston Blumenthal chocolate chip cookie, I can't stop myself from trying, and falling in love, with a different recipe every couple of weeks.
I picked up a jar of hazelnut butter the other week with no real idea of how I was going to use it. I do this relatively frequently and more often than not, said ingredient ends up buried at the back of my kitchen cupboard and forgotten about. This time, however, I was determined that my ridiculously overpriced jar of something that I could easily make at home wasn't going to go to waste.
A little googling led me to a recipe on epicurious for chocolate chip cookies made with hazelnut butter. Although I am not a huge fan of nutella (please don't tell anyone), the combination of hazelnut and chocolate is undoubtedly one that works. I had some buckwheat flour on hand and decided to use that rather than the plain flour that the recipe called for - quite apart from the fact that buckwheat flour is gluten free and I could therefore feed the cookies to my father, the nutty taste works perfectly with the hazelnut flavour. It would be fine to use plain flour if you'd rather though.
I fell in love with these cookies on first bite, as did everyone else who tried one. They have a great texture, a little bit crisp around the edges but with a satisfying chew in the middle. The hazelnut butter gives them a pretty mellow flavour and I really liked the fact that they weren't too sweet. Not least because that made it easier to justify eating more of them...
You will also note that I've given the ingredient list in cups as well as my preferred grams. The question I probably get asked most is how to convert my recipes from weight to volume measurements so I thought I'd start including it despite my very strongly held belief that baking by weight produces much better results. A couple of caveats - don't pick and choose which measurement type, pick one and go with it because there will be slight differences. I also won't have tested the recipe in cups so I can't guarantee that the results will be the same. I will say, however, that my conversations from cups to grams usually work okay because I have a geeky spreadsheet that I've set up. If you decide to make the recipe and notice any problems, please do let me know.
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Hazelnut butter and buckwheat flour chocolate chip cookies Yield: Approx 40 cookies
Adapted from epicurious
Ingredients
- 170g (3/4 cup) creamy hazelnut butter
- 140g (1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
- 110g (1/2 cup) caster/granulated sugar
- 90g (1/2 cup) light brown soft sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 170g (1 1/2 cups) buckwheat flour
- 3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda/baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder (gluten free if ncessary)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (plus optional extra for sprinkling)
- 200g (1 1/3 cup) plain chocolate chips
Cooking Directions
- Beat together the butters and sugars until soft and creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until combined. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and fold them into the dough. Fold through the chocolate chips.
- Cover the dough and chill for at least two hours.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and line a baking tray with non-stick paper.
- Shape a tablespoon's worth of dough into a ball with your hands, place on the baking tray and squish down. If wanted, sprinkle with a touch of salt. This recipe makes quite a few cookies so, unless you have a giant oven, store the dough in the fridge in between rounds of cookies.
- Bake for 10 minutes until golden brown. Leave the cookies to cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.