Nutella Makes the World Go Round

Not that you need a reason to eat Nutella, but here’s one anyways: Sara of Ms. Adventures in Italy and Shelley of At Home in Rome are hosting World Nutella Day. I’m offering up two selections for the cause. One breakfast option and one dessert, but they’re easily interchangeable. The first, Nutella and Nanners is pretty straight forward. I just spooned a bunch of nutella into one of the pitas I made yesterday, added some sliced bananas and called it breakfast. My Nutella ice cream sandwiches are a little more complex. I decided to invent my own Nutella cookie recipe and then my own ice cream recipe too. For the Nutella cookies, I took Dorie’s recipe for Peanut Butter Crisscrosses, removed the peanut butter, added some other things and called them, (are you ready for this?) Nutella cookies. Apparently all my inventiveness went into created the cookie and not naming them. The cookies were good, but they could be better. I liked them right out of the oven when the middles were still soft, but they ended up a little too crispy for my liking once they were cooled off. It’s not a bad start though, it just needs a little tweaking. For my ice cream, I basically wanted to take my favourite hot chocolate recipe and freeze it. I combined chocolate, cocoa, cinnamon, sugar, milk, cream and marshmallows, I brought the mixture to a boil, took it off the heat and added Baileys. The result was good, but once again, it needs some tweaking, possibly some more Baileys. Even though both recipes weren’t quite what I wanted them to be, they combined to make a pretty good ice cream sandwich which makes for an excellent dessert, dinner, snack, lunch or breakfast. I’ll leave it up to you.

Bri’s Nutella Cookies, (Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours)

1 ¼ cups all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon fleur de sel

A couple shakes of cinnamon

1 stick, (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup Nutella (generous)

½ cup demerara sugar

¼ cup sugar

1 large egg

¾ cup chocolate chips

About a ¼ cup sugar for rolling

Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

Beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Add the Nutella and beat for another minute. Add the sugars and beat 3 more minutes. Add the egg and beat for a minute. Scrape down the bowl and add the dry ingredients on low speed until just mix. Stir in the chocolate chips. You’ll have a very soft, mushy dough.

Use a tablespoon to measure out dough for each cookie, roll the dough between your palms into balls and drop the balls into the sugar. Roll the balls around in the sugar to coat them, then place on the baking sheet.

Bake for about 10 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point. When done the cookies will still be a little soft. Let the cookies sit on the sheets for a minute before before transferring to a rack to cool.

Makes about 25 cookies.

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Nutella + Cookies + Nutella Day + Dorie Greenspan + Ice Cream + Chocolate