Brown butter, chocolate chunk and Nutella cookies
As I don't have scales in this Airbnb I've had to rely on cups. I've never been a fan as they can be fiddly and imprecise, whereas a set of digital scales bish bash bosh everything is weighed to the exact half-gram. Sadly, that luxury is not available, however I've included both cups and grams quantities in the recipe.
Servings: 6 cookies
Ingredients
- 75 g Nutella
- 100 g self-raising flour or cake flour
- ¼ tsp salt and a few pinches for the tops
- 55 g plus 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 100 g white sugar
- ½ egg beaten
- 5-6 squares of any chocolate
Instructions
- Grease a large baking tray – I used butter and flour to grease mine because, yes baking paper is another thing I don’t have! But grease however you wish. Dollop teaspoon-sized blobs of Nutella on the tray and freeze them while you make the dough.
- Melt the 55g butter in a small saucepan – ideally a pan without a non-stick surface so you can clearly see the colour of the butter as it starts to darken. Keep your eye on it as it begins to foam. Once it smells nutty and rich, the colour is deep gold and little flecks of milk solids turn brown take the pan off the heat. Be careful, you don’t want the milk solids to burn.
- Pour the butter into a measuring jug and add the extra 1 tbsp butter and leave it to melt. This extra 1 tbsp increases the quantity in case any butter evaporated when melted.
- Measure the flour, salt and sugar in a bowl, mix and set aside. Finely chop the chocolate, and yes any flavour will do as, after all, you’re in lockdown!
- Pour the half of the beaten egg into the butter. Mix and pour the wet ingredients into the dry. Add the chocolate shards and mix all together. It should be a soft dough. Shape it into 6 or 7 equal sized balls.
- Flatten a ball of dough. Take the tray of Nutella balls from the freezer and, after gently prizing them away from the sheet, wrap them in cookie dough, sealing it tightly. Repeat with all the cookies and line them slightly apart on the baking tray.
- Pop the tray back in the freezer and turn the oven to 190°C/170°C fan/375°F.
- After 15 minutes the oven should be hot so slide in the cookie tray. Bake for 10 minutes, until the cookies are golden. Lift them onto a cooling rack and eat one immediately while the Nutella is warm and the cookies are gooey.