Nutella Nirvana

We found this humungous jar of Nutella on our last trip to NYC.  No, we did not buy $65.00 worth of Nutella goodness!  In fact, I try NOT to buy Nutella at all because of my very favorite, seriously simple go-to Nutella recipe:

1 cup coffee

1 jar Nutella

1 spoon

But for some reason I recently bought 2 jars  and have so far resisted the call of the Nutella.  Luckily The Captain's office is having a cookie swap and I found a great cookie recipe from Erin's Food Files:

NUTELLA COOKIES

Ingredients:

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

½ cup Nutella or other hazelnut chocolate spread

1 egg

½ tsp. Frangelico (if you have it, if not vanilla will work just fine)

1 ½ cups flour ( I use white wheat flour)

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips (I chopped some semi-sweet Trader Joe's baking pieces)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream butter with an electric mixer about 1 minute until smooth. Add in both sugars. Beat on high speed about 3 minutes until light & fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

With the mixer on low, add the egg and Frangelico (or vanilla). Then add the Nutella and mix well.

In a small bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, and mix on low speed until incorporated. Increase the speed to medium and mix just until the dough is smooth. Fold in chocolate chips.

Using a small ice cream scoop (or a teaspoon) form the dough into balls and place on greased cookie sheet. (To prevent  cookies from spreading too much, I stuck the cookies on the cookie sheets in the freezer for about 10 minutes before baking).

Bake 6-7 minutes until the tops just start to crack. (or 7-8 if baking from freezer). Let cookies cool about 5 minutes and transfer to a rack to cool completely.

************************

These make great little cookies, but I still had some Nutella left over, so I made cookie sandwiches - spread Nutella on one cookie and top with another.   Now I have cookies for the swap and the Nutella is gone!