Nutella Swirl Brownies

Nutella Swirl Brownies - made October 7, 2018 from Rock Recipes

Hmm, so, normally I would be in raptures with even the concept of a Nuella swirl brownie. Because it would be as the name implied, right? Brownies made with Nutella mixed into the batter itself and with even more Nutella swirled into the batter so that when the brownie baked, you would get large swaths of Nutella intermingled with dense, fudgy brownies.

Yeah, that was the vision. My execution, however, left something to be desired. For one thing, as you all know by now, I always use Pernigotti cocoa which has a dark chocolate flavor that pretty much overpowers the Nutella flavor and the Nutella didn’t stand a chance being mixed into the brownie batter. That would’ve been okay because you still had the swirl-in Nutella element going on. Except I don’t think I dolloped enough because I didn’t have swaths of Nutella. More like a sprinkle here and there.

But my main sin with this brownie is it seems like I overbaked it. I didn’t think I had because the toothpick test kept yielding raw batter but it was in there for so long that some of the Nutella “swirl” looked like it burned. What the heck? They weren’t dry but you can tell from the pictures that they’re not as moist-fudgy-dense as I normally prefer my brownies. I suggest checking these at the 30-minute mark, if not sooner, then erring on the side of caution and taking them out before 40 minutes, depending on your oven. 

1 cup butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
2/3 cup Nutella
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup Nutella, for swirling

1. Line a 9 x 13 baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar to dissolve. Cool slightly before adding the Nutella, whisking until smooth and combined. Add eggs, one at a time, then vanilla, mixing until just combined.
3. Sift together the cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter-egg mixture and mix until smooth. Fold in the flour and chocolate chips.
4. Spread batter evenly into the pan and swirl in the remaining 1/3 cup Nutella. Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool completely before cutting and serving.

Oatmeal Cookies - Levain Bakery copycat

Oatmeal Cookies - Levain Bakery copycat - made dough September 8, 2018 from Fran's Favs

My friend Rick reminded me that I haven’t mailed him oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in awhile. He was right. So I broke out this recipe that I’ve been meaning to try for some time.

I don’t have a standby oatmeal cookie recipe and I don’t try new recipes for them that often. Unlike Rick, I’m not a huge fan of oatmeal cookies. They tend to be pretty filling, maybe a little too filling because I like my cookies to be chubby and have some heft. Add oatmeal and I get hefty all right. Me and the cookie.

These cookies didn’t spread very much and they were supposed to be Levain Bakery-esque so I made them big. Each cookie was a behemoth. Like a scone version of a cookie. I ended up eating two halves on two separate days because they were a little filling and . They were pretty good but, not being a big oatmeal cookie fan, I don’t know if I’ll remember them a month from now and I’ll probably keep searching for more oatmeal cookie recipes to try.

Oh and don’t tell Rick but I never was able to get to the post office so I didn’t mail him these. I gave them away at work instead. Whoops.

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter
4 ounces cream cheese
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon, optional
1 3/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup walnuts, chopped and toasted, optional
1 cup raisins or chocolate chips

1. In a mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter, cream cheese, granulated sugar and brown sugar just until creamy. Add the eggs and vanilla; beat until just incorporated.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, if using. Add in the oats and mix. Add the dry ingredients to the wet batter, mixing until just combined. Fold in walnuts and raisins or chocolate chips.
3. Divide dough into 12 portions, each weighing 4 ounces. Form into large balls and cover and chill for several hours or overnight. 
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes then reduce heat to 325 degrees F and bake for another 12-14 minutes or until edges are golden and middles no longer look shiny or raw. 

Pecan Sandies

Pecan Sandies - made dough October 7, 2018 from She Wears Many Hats

My cousin gave me bags of pecans last month and I was happy to incorporate them into my baking. As a general rule, I don’t like nuts in my cookies (or cakes or brownies) but they’re acceptable in some cookies. I mean, how do you make pecan sandies without pecans? You don’t.

Pecan Sandies aren’t quite like a chewy cookie like chocolate chip cookies. They tend more towards the shortbread end of the spectrum. Like a Mexican Wedding Cake on steroids. Which you can interpret to mean that I made these a bit bigger than the Buttery Tea Balls.

These turned out pretty well. Two tricks to making this cookie: first, make the dough discs fairly thick. These don’t spread very much and you don’t want these to be too thin or they’ll crumble more easily due to their texture. The other tip is to underbake them. I know, I know, I always say that but if you bake these fully, they have a tendency to have a drier mouthfeel rather than a melt-y one because the composition is more like shortbread and not like a moist, chewy cookie. Oh, and third trick – toast the pecans first to bring out their flavor. 

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, slightly softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon ice water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups plain flour (I used all-purpose)
1 cup finely chopped pecans, toasted

1. Using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together until smooth.
2. Add ice water, salt, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat until combined. Add flour in two additions, beating until just combined. Add in pecans and beat until just mixed; do not overmix.
3. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls and pat slightly into thick discs. Cover and chill for several hours or overnight.
4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until edges are light golden brown and middles are no longer shiny or raw.

Nutella Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies

Nutella Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies  - made dough September 9, 2018, modified from Real House Moms

I’m way, way behind on updating my blog. But I couldn’t go on much longer without posting this one. Probably one of the best cookies I’ve made in the last few months. It’s a snickerdoodle. It’s Nutella. It’s a sandwich cookie. It’s a Nutella Snickerdoodle sandwich cookie. All the OMG goodness that name implies and then some.

As if all that wasn’t enough, they’re really easy to make too. The dough is just your standard mix-in-your-mixing-bowl cookie dough, you scoop out small dough balls (since it’ll be a sandwich cookie, you don’t want to go too big or you’ll eat yourself sick), chill them, roll them in cinnamon sugar, bake them, then sandwich them with Nutella once they’re cool.

Of course you never, never overbake them and you can be as generous with the Nutella filling as you want. I like to make them small so they look more dainty. And so I can kid myself that having two or five isn’t that bad.

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup Nutella
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
Nutella for filling

1. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter, Nutella, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in eggs and vanilla then add dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Portion dough into small balls of uniform size then flatten slightly into thick small discs. Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. In a small bowl, mix together the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Roll chilled or frozen dough discs in mixture, coating completely. Evenly space on prepared baking sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes, until edges are set and middles are no longer raw. Do not overbake.
5. Cool cookies completely on wire racks then sandwich with Nutella.

Double Chocolate Cookies

Double Chocolate Cookies - made dough August 11, 2018, modified from Crazy for Crust

These originally had macadamia nuts in them but I only like macadamia nuts in white chocolate cookies or white chocolate coconut cookies so I omitted them from these.

So they're just double chocolate cookies with one chocolate being the cookie itself and the other being the white chocolate chunks in them. I also kept the semisweet chocolate chips so maybe I should call them triple chocolate cookies.

They spread a bit more than I normally like but they weren't thin. They still had enough heft to them to be chewy. As with all chocolate cookie recipes, time them since you can't just go by appearance as to when they're baked. The best giveaway is they don't look raw or shiny in the middle. Take them out when they look barely done and let them cool on the baking sheets. Chocolate will set as it cools and you'll get that rich, fudgy texture when they're at room temperature.

These tasted pretty good but the richness of the chocolate flavor will always (always) depends on the quality of your ingredients, especially the cocoa. I only ever bake with Pernigotti cocoa. It's expensive, whether you get it from Williams Sonoma or amazon, but worth it (to me). As I always say, if I'm going to eat empty calories, they have to be the best empty calories I can bake.

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I recommend Pernigotti's)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup white chocolate chips

1. In medium bowl, whisk together cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and flour; set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until combined. Mix in egg and vanilla until smooth and combined. Add dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in semisweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips.
3. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze several hours or overnight. 
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space frozen cookie dough balls on prepared sheets and bake 9 - 11 minutes or until middles no longer look raw. Do not overbake. Let cool on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

Nutella Caramel Hazelnut Brownies

Nutella Caramel Hazelnut Brownies - made August 11, 2018 from Bell' Alimento

Whenever I see a caramel layer baked into a brownie, I always have high hopes I can replicate it as successfully as the blog from which I found the recipe.

I'm almost always wrong. I even modified the directions so that you parbake the bottom layer of the brownie to make it firm enough to hold the caramel layer and not have the caramel mingle into the brownie batter. Yeah, still wrong.

I think it's because of the caramel I'm using, which is salted caramel sauce from Trader Joe's, instead of the more traditional melted Kraft caramels thinned with a little milk or cream. The Kraft caramels make a thicker caramel layer that remains more distinct. Much as I like the Trader Joe's caramel sauce, all it does in this brownie is sink into the bottom layer, get stuck to the bottom, and make the brownies more moist and fudgy but loses that distinct caramel layer.

But still, this was a good fudgy brownie. Don't eat it warm unless you just want fudgy mush. Do top it with the toasted hazelnuts as they provide a nice crunch and contrast to the fudginess of the brownie.

I also experimented with making this a mini dessert in a little dessert glass, layered with Nutella. Yup, it was as good as it sounded.

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter (I mistakenly used 1 stick but it was fine)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup caramel sauce
1/4 cup Nutella, melted
Hazelnuts, toasted and roughly chopped for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 10" x 7" baking dish with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder; set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mix, combine sugar and butter; beat until creamy. Add in eggs, one at a time, then add vanilla. Mix just until combined. 
4. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing until just combined; do not overbeat.
5. Pour half the batter into prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes or until top layer looks firm (no more than 15 minutes). Pour caramel in an even layer over parbaked crust and cover with remaining batter. Return to oven and bake another 15-20 minutes, until toothpick inserted at an angle near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs, not raw batter.
6. While brownie is still hot, spread evenly with Nutella. Garnish with chopped, toasted. hazelnuts. Let cool completely before cutting and serving.

Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodles

Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodles - made dough August 11, 2018 from Taste and Tell

I don’t know who Mrs. Sigg is but her snickerdoodle recipe has been making the rounds on pinterest. I have several really good snickerdoodle recipes already but I’m willing to be captivated by a new one so I gave this a test drive.

And it drove quite well. I’m normally leery about cookie recipes that use shortening because, hi, butter snob checking in. But I’m willing to lower my nose-in-the-air a fraction when there’s both butter and shortening in there. The shortening prevents spread and adds a crispness and the butter gives it a better flavor while also keeping the cookie chewy. So Mrs. Sigg knew what she was doing.

I did modify the recipe to add a teaspoon of Penzey’s Vietnamese cinnamon to the cookie dough. That was a trick I learned from Sally’s Baking Addiction to add a little more snickerdoodly (yes, it’s a word, k?) flavor to the cookies. The dough was a little soft when I finished mixing and I chilled it for 30 minutes before portioning into cookie dough balls but I needn’t have worried as they didn’t spread much, thanks to the shortening.

I will also give props to the shortening for giving the edges an airy crispness to the texture while kudos to the butter for keeping the important middle portion soft and chewy. Overall I liked both the texture and flavor of this. And now I have another good snickerdoodle recipe to add to my arsenal.

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1. Cream together butter, shortening and sugar. Add in eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon until blended. Do not overmix. Chill, covered, in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes.
2. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls and pat into thick discs. Cover and chill or refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. Combine 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon in a small bowl. Roll frozen dough discs in cinnamon-sugar mixture until completely coated. Evenly space on baking sheets and bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until just set at the edges. Do not overbake. Remove from heat, let set on baking sheets for 3-4 minutes then transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely.