Healthy Peanut Butter Caramel Chocolate Truffles

Another pretty darn healthy treat!  Underneath that Enjoy Life chocolate is some pretty darn tasty peanut butter caramel—all natural, no sugar added.  Did you know if you blend dates in a food processor long enough, it becomes like a paste, or even better—like caramel.  No joke.  Sure you might think it’s not the same caramel you’re used to, you know, the kind made with lots of sugar, cream, butter and some kinds even high fructose corn syrup and other unmentionables.  And while it’s not just like your favorite caramel, it’s a darn good and much healthier substitute.

So next you’re thinking, “Ew, dates, I don’t like dates.”  Well, I’m being honest here and telling you if I gave you one of these truffle candies and didn’t tell you what was in it, you’d never know!  I’m super happy about this.  I’d seen a few other places on the internet that have made “homemade refined sugar free caramel” and just used my own decided measurements until I was happy with it.  I’m so happy I might need to forego this post right now and go make some more candy!

Oh, okay, I’ll share it with you first.  So first I made the caramel.  Then I knew I wanted peanut butter involved with the candy, so I added some natural, organic peanut butter.  Then just threw in a little salt, vanilla and coconut flour.  The coconut flour probably wasn’t necessary, but I wanted to make sure it would all bind together and I’d just be able to form the dough into balls.  I am happy with the results, so I plan to just leave it as is.  After the peanut butter caramel balls were formed, they spent a little time in the freezer just to make sure they were good and ready for a quick dunk in a chocolate bath.

 Healthy Peanut Butter Caramel Truffles, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

1  1/4 cups pitted dates, soaked in water (not cold, but doesn’t have to be hot) for 30 minutes, then chopped (save the water)

1/2 tablespoon coconut oil

1/2 tablespoon water

4 tablespoons natural, unsweetened peanut butter

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon coconut flour

4 ounces Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips (or chocolate of your choice)

1 teaspoon coconut oil

Put the soaked, then drained and chopped dates in the bowl of a food processor.  Let the processor go for about 2 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Turn it on again and let it keep chopping up the dates.  Add the coconut oil and water and let it process for another couple minutes.  You’ll know when it is a paste caramel-like texture.  (It is not quite as smooth and liquid runny like some caramel, but it’s good!)  Add the peanut butter, salt, vanilla and coconut flour.  Pulse until well combined.  Remove the blade from the processor bowl and scoop the filling into balls.  (I used a small cookie scoop, it’s probably about 1 tablespoon.)  Lay them on a waxed paper lined plate or small baking sheet and put it in the freezer for 20-30 minutes. 

Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe glass bowl in 30 second intervals on 7-8 power.  Stir after each 30 seconds, it only takes about 1  1/2 minutes, add the coconut oil before the last time.  Stir until smooth.  Let it sit for a few minutes before dunking the candy into it.  Using a fork, set the candy on the fork and dunk it into the melted chocolate.  Spoon chocolate over the top until it is all covered.  Tap the fork on the edge of the glass bowl, letting the chocolate smooth over the surface.  Using another fork, push the chocolate covered candy onto a wax paper lined plate.  They start to harden immediately but once you have the all coated, put the plate in the refrigerator for a few minutes.  Makes about 16.  Keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  They are great cold, but you can have them out of the refrigerator before serving for a while, too.   

Make yourself a healthy treat for Easter this weekend—or anytime year round!

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Banana Cake Truffles—12 Weeks of Christmas Treats

Week 7 of the 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats and I know what you’re thinking—those don’t look very Christmas-y.  Well, use your imagination and pretend they are red, green and white.  See, they’d be perfect!  I made these a couple months ago for a baby shower I hosted and have been wanting to blog them since, but haven’t found the opportunity to do so.  I decided you need to know about them, so here you go.

I really don’t take any credit for the idea for these.  Back at the end of August (which seems like just yesterday, or maybe like a week ago anyway), Dawn at Vanilla Sugar posted some Banana Bread Balls she made using banana bread (obviously) instead of the ever-popular cake balls.  After I saw those, I knew I wanted to try them because I. LOVE. BANANAS.  (You are what you eat, right?)  I also don’t really care for cake balls.  Mostly because I don’t like cake mixes or canned frosting, which seems to be “the thing” for cake balls.  I have tried them in the past with homemade cake and frosting and they did turn out well, but have still never really made cake balls all that much. 

Dawn made hers with banana bread and cream cheese, then dipped them in melted chocolate and sprinkled them with walnuts.  YUM!

Well, I stumbled upon a little boo-boo I made in the kitchen back in September.  I made my most favorite cake in the world--Banana Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake, but thought I’d try it in a bread pan and make a banana “bread” that had a swirl of cinnamon-walnut-chocolate chip streusel in the middle and on top, like the cake.  I believe it would have worked just fine in the bread pan, but took it out of the oven too soon, so the bread sunk a little in the middle.  That doesn’t make me very happy, but I wasn’t about to throw out the cake/bread.  Having Dawn’s Banana Bread Balls in mind, I just started taking some of the cooled cake and forming it in to walnut-sized balls.  I stuck them in the freezer. 

That’s where the baby shower I mentioned comes in to play.  I remembered those lonely cake balls in the freezer and decided they would be really fun to dress up for a girly baby shower.  I chose to use candy melts for dunking them and used white and pink and some chocolate bark. 

Cute.  Fun.  Yum!  Before telling shower guests what they were, they were all trying to guess what flavors were in them as they ate them.  Did I mention I love this coffee cake?  It has, of course, bananas and the swirl/top layer has mini chocolate chips, cinnamon and walnuts, along with brown sugar.  Because I use mini chocolate chips and some pretty finely chopped walnuts, they were fine when forming the cake in to balls.  The cake was cool, but still fresh, so the chocolate chips kind of melted in with the cake as I formed the balls.  It was all good!

 Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Banana Cake Truffles, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

For the cake--

Banana Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Coffee Cake, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Bon Appetit 2003

3/4 cup mini chocolate chips

2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped and toasted

1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon (heaping)

1  1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4 ounces coconut oil (original recipes uses 1 stick unsalted butter--I was actually out of butter (gasp), but loved how this turned out with the coconut oil

1 large egg

1  1/3 cups very ripe banana, mashed (I used about 4 small-medium bananas)

3 tablespoons buttermilk

Prehead oven to 350 degrees.  Butter and flour an 8 inch square pan (although I used a 10 inch round springform pan and it worked great!)  *Or try a 9x5 inch bread pan—bake for 50 minutes, then check for doneness and adjust accordingly. I probably baked the bread pan cake for 50-55 minutes and it could have used another 5 minutes.  It was not doughy, just sunk in the center.

In a medium sized bowl, stir together the chocolate chips, brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon.  Set aside.

In another bowl, whisk together to sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer (this can be done all by hand if you use the oil as opposed to butter which beats together with the sugar better in a mixer), beat coconut oil and sugar until well combined.  Add egg and beat until fluffy.  Stir in mashed bananas and buttermilk.  Add dry ingredients and blend well.  Spread half the batter in prepared baking pan.  Sprinkle half the streusel evenly over the first half.  Spread the remaining batter over that and top with the rest of the streusel topping.  Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (the original recipes says 45 minutes), with my bigger pan, I only baked it 25 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.

For the coating and cake truffles instructions:

6-8 ounces white candy melts

6-8 ounces pink candy melts

6-8 ounces chocolate bark or candy melts

sprinkles for decorating

*Use any colors you’d like for any holiday or event.

Once the cake is cooled, form into walnut-sized cake balls, form it to hold together my squeezing it in your hand.  Set them on a waxed paper lined baking sheet, then cover with plastic wrap.  Freeze until firm, or once frozen, put them in a plastic zip top bag and freeze up to 2 months. 

When ready to coat the truffles, remove them from the freezer. 

Melt the candy according to package directions in a microwave-safe bowl.  Dip the frozen cake truffles in one color at a time.  If the melts are hardening, you can microwave it again until it is the consistency you want.  Dip one cake truffle into the melted candy while it is sitting on a fork.  Bring it out of the candy and tap the fork lightly on the side of the bowl to drip off the excess.  Set on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper using another fork to slide it off the dunking fork.  Sprinkle immediately.  If using another color to drizzle over the truffles, you can do that after all of them are made. 

Healthy Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles

These tasty, perfectly peanut buttery and dark chocolaty treats are just the thing for a little sweet bite when you need one.  I love that they are actually pretty healthy and you could easily make them gluten free. You might think peanut butter and chocolate ARE gluten free, but I happened to use Naturally More Peanut Butter which has a few added ingredients, like flax seeds.  The ingredient list also includes wheat germ, so these aren’t gluten free, but you could use any natural peanut butter you’d like and most are just peanuts and salt.

I can’t even take credit for this and I’m sure there have been lots of chocolate peanut butter truffles on the internet, but I was/am happy enough with how these turned out that I needed to share them with all of you.  I actually got the recipe from the Coconut Recipes website.  It was a newly submitted recipe by a reader, Megan from Glendale, California.  I liked that these have coconut flour and coconut oil.  I have a bag of coconut flour that I’ve been wanting to find more things to use it up with.

These couldn’t have been more simple to make.  Some natural peanut butter was mixed with just a touch of agave nectar (you could also use honey) and some coconut flour.  After forming the peanut butter mixture into balls, they are frozen for a short time and then dipped in melted dark chocolate.  That’s it.  You could easily make a bunch of these for a party or as gifts.

Healthy Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Coconut Recipes

6 tablespoons (96 grams) natural peanut butter

1 tablespoon agave nectar (or honey)

pinch of salt (if using unsalted peanut butter)

1/4 cup coconut flour

3 ounces dark chocolate

1/2 teaspoon coconut oil

Line a baking sheet with waxed paper.  Mix together in a medium sized bowl the peanut butter, agave, salt and coconut flour.  (This easily mixes together with a spoon—no need for a mixer!)  Once it’s all combined, form the peanut butter mixture into teaspoon-sized balls.  Set on the waxed paper and freeze for 30 minutes.

Melt the chocolate and coconut oil either in a glass microwave-safe bowl or in a double boiler on the stove over medium heat.  Stir until melted and smooth.  Let sit for a few minutes so it’s not too hot before dipping each of the peanut butter balls into the melted chocolate.  Set each one on a fork, set it down in the chocolate and spoon more melted chocolate over it until covered.  Tap the edge of the fork on the bowl to let any of the excess chocolate drip off into the bowl. 

Set each one on the waxed paper and let sit until the chocolate hardens (it starts to immediately because the peanut butter is frozen).  You can also set the sheet full in the refrigerator to set up completely when they are all finished.  This smaller recipes make about 12 truffles, you could easily double the recipe.

This post is being added to Lisa’s Sweets for a Saturday over at her delicious blog, Sweet as Sugar Cookies!

 

Peppermint French Macarons—12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies

My Thanksgiving baking is in full swing ahead, but I wanted to share these Peppermint Macarons with you today for the ninth week of 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies.  I’ve been wanting to make macarons again since I made Cocoa Macarons with Dark Chocolate Ganache back in July.  In trying to decide what flavor to make, I ran across these and decided peppermint was the way to go!

French Macarons seem intimidating, but they really are quite simple to make if you follow the instructions.  I may not have them down perfectly yet, but these turned out well and I was pleased.  I made half of them with a peppermint white chocolate ganache and half of them with a chocolate ganache with some almond extract added.  I actually liked the chocolate ones better.  Following the recipe for the white chocolate ganache on the link, it had too much cream with the chocolate, so it didn’t get quite as thick as I would have liked.  It also didn’t have enough peppermint.  I wish I would have added more and will next time—and use less cream as well!

The cookie itself is just the usual macaron made with almond flour.  I think it would also have been good with some peppermint extract.  But the ones I made with the chocolate ganache with some almond extract added were really good.  It was my friend’s birthday Wednesday, so I packed up most of the chocolate ones and gave them to her.

These would be perfect to give as Christmas gifts.  Who wouldn’t love a gift box full of macarons?  I like that you can make these pretty much any and all colors and flavors you’d like, so you could really kick up the festive holiday look with these.

 

I didn’t give my friend any of the ones with the white chocolate peppermint because it just wouldn’t quite stay firm enough and was squishing out of the cookies too much.  They will get eaten here!

Peppermint Macarons, adapted by Katrina, Baking and Boys! from Foodness Gracious

1 cup (110 grams) powdered sugar

3/4 cup almond flour

2 large egg whites, room temperature

pinch of cream of tartar

1/4 cup (50 grams) superfine sugar (granulated would be fine)

red food coloring (optional)

Sift the powdered sugar and the almond flour using a fine mesh strainer.  Set aside.

Whisk the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the wire attachment until they become foamy.  Add the cream of tartar and beat a little more.  Add the superfine sugar gradually while beating on high until stiff peaks form.  Add the red food coloring if doing so. 

Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold the almond flour/powdered sugar into the egg whites with a spatula, mixing just until all incorporated.  Put the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large round tip and pipe about a quarter size cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet.  Once they are all piped, if any of a point on the top, tap it down gently with a damp finger.   Leave them sitting at room temperature for about 45 minutes, until you see them become dull on top. 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  When the oven is ready, put the baking sheets (this made enough to fill about 1 and a half sheets) in an turn the oven down to 325 degrees.  Leave the door open slightly with a wooden spoon holding it open.  Bake for 10 minutes, turning the sheets after five minutes.  Leave to cool for a couple of minutes when they come out of the oven and then gently lift the whole paper sheet from the tray to the counter. 

White Chocolate Peppermint Ganache

5 ounces white chocolate, chopped or you can use chips

1/4 cup heavy cream (my adjusted amount)

3/4 tablespoon butter

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (or to taste)

Heat the cream in a small saucepan until just boiling.  Pour it over the chocolate in another bowl.  Let sit for a couple minutes.  Stir gently with a spatula until smooth.  Add the butter and stir again until smooth and shiny.  Add the extract and stir together.  Let cool and thicken.  Put the ganache in a piping bag (or a plastic zip top bag with a corner snipped off) and pipe a mound of ganache onto one cookie.  Top it with another cookie and continue to finish the remaining ones. 

Dark Chocolate Almond Ganache

4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped or you can use chips

3 tablespoons heavy cream

3/4 tablespoon butter

1/4 teaspoon almond extract (or to taste)

Heat the cream to just boiling, pour over the chocolate and let sit for a minute or two.  Gently stir together with a spatula until smooth.  Add the butter and flavoring and stir until smooth and shiny.  Put the ganache in a pipng bag (or a plastic zip top tab with a corner snipped off) and pipe a mound of ganache onto one cookie.  Top it with another cookie.  Continue to fill other cookies. 

You will probably have some leftover ganache.  I waited until it hardened a little more, then rolled it into balls and tossed it in some crushed peppermint candy for some quick, tasty truffles!  These would also be great for your holiday gifts!  You can roll the balls of ganache in any thing you want—finely chopped nuts, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, colorful sprinkles, etc. 

This post is also being added to Lisa’s Sweets For A Saturday at Sweet As Sugar Cookies.

Check out the other 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies blog hoppers!

Chocolate Truffle Heart Cakes (And they’re gluten free!!!)

I have been sitting here trying to decide what to write about these Chocolate Truffle Heart Cakes and I feel like I’m speechless.  I wish I could just show you the pictures and you’d fall in love as much as I did over these.  Let’s just say if you consider yourself a chocolate lover, THIS is the be all-end all decadent, rich chocolate dessert.  These are a cross between the best chocolate cake and fudgy brownies you’ve ever tasted and are doused in an amazing chocolate glaze that once chilled turns into a protective chocolate coating for the rich, dark cake beneath.  You’ll think you want a great big heart (you could cut these with any shape cutter), but really 2-3 inch cutters make the perfect size dessert.  This is very rich.  Serve it with some fresh raspberries or make a coulis with frozen raspberries and a little sugar, you could even set the cake on a pool of coulis.  How about just a little whipped cream?  That’s what we did.

I only have a 4 inch cutter, 2 inch and 1 1/2 inch.  I made two 4 inch ones and a bunch of the smaller ones.    Kevin tried eating one of the 4 inch cakes last night and he couldn’t finish it.  It’s really just SO good, but SO decadent and rich.  And I’m telling you, if you LOVE chocolate, like I LOVE chocolate, this is the one thing you must try!

I got this recipe (and the extreme pleasure of tasting the truffle cake) from two of the classes I took at The Community Mercantile in Lawrence, KS last year.  The first time I had the pleasure of tasting the cake was from a class by Nancy Stark and the other was a Dinner Class for Valentine’s Day from my favorite chef, Paige (A Cooking Life blog).  Paige mentioned in the class that she got the recipe from Nancy and isn’t sure where she got it or if she came up with it herself.  Nancy is also a fantastic chef who really knows desserts and has a business doing wedding cakes and everything else you can imagine.  She teaches many classes, too.  The one I took where I got to taste the truffle cake was a Valentine’s Chocolate Desserts class.  Such a good class!  In the Dinner Class from Paige, she served these with a little homemade creme anglaise.  Let me know if you’d like that recipe.

You need to make these little cakes.  The boys liked them, Kevin likes it, I LOVE it.  I also made some rounded truffles with some of the scraps, because once you cut out shapes, there are scraps.  The fudgy cake then easily rolls into balls.  Enrobe the chilled cakes with this fantastic, glossy Chocolate Glaze.  HEAVEN!  I must tell you, this is not a light dessert.  It is full of good-quality chocolate, eggs, butter, sugar—yeah, all the good stuff.  But hey, there’s no flour—so these are gluten-free!!!  One thing I will mention that I did different from the recipe is that I did not add coffee and while I agree that you don’t really taste the coffee, it just enhances the chocolate flavor, we just don’t buy or use coffee here.  In place of the coffee, you could use fruit juice, any flavorings or do as I did and just use vanilla extract and water. 

Wanna see inside?

The cake easily freezes, and the glaze stores in the fridge for pretty much as long as you’d store butter, so you could just make a few and save the rest for another occasion, but if you have a spouse, kid, friend, lover, neighbor, family member or anyone you know who loves chocolate, you need to make these.  They will love you forever!

Chocolate Truffle Heart Cakes, adapted by Paige Vandegrift from Nancy Stark (I noticed their two recipes aren’t quite exactly the same, but close.) (My changes are in red.—Katrina)

1 cup unsalted butter (8 ounces)

8 ounces best quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips)

6 large eggs

1 ½ cups granulated sugar (300 grams)

1 cup cocoa powder (92 grams)

¼ cup strong coffee (if you like, place 1 tablespoon of brandy and 1 teaspoon vanilla in a measuring cup and then add coffee to make ¼ cup, or some fruit juice or flavoring as well) (I used 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and the rest water up to 1/4 cup) 

1 recipe chocolate glaze

Prepare a quarter sheet pan (or 9x13 inch cake pan) by spraying it with cooking spray and lining the bottom with parchment paper.

Melt butter, then add chocolate and stir until melted. Measure sugar and cocoa into a large bowl. Stir with a whisk to break up lumps and aerate. Add eggs and coffee (liquid) to bowl and mix well. Whisk in the melted butter and chocolate. Spread into pan and bake at 375 degrees until the surface looks dry (it may be beginning to crack)—about 20-25 minutes. Cool completely, then cover and chill overnight.

Turn chilled cake layer out on to a clean flat surface such as a cutting board. Cut out heart shapes, any size you’d like.  (I found I had to carefully push each heart out of the cutter and I washed the cutter each time.) Anything bigger than 3 inches would almost be too much! Working with one cake at a time, slide an offset spatula under the cake and ladle some of the glaze evenly over the cake, allowing the glaze to drip back into the bowl. Transfer the cake to a wire rack and repeat with the remaining cakes. Chill the cakes. Up to one hour before serving, place the cakes on individual dessert plates to allow the cakes to come to room temperature. To serve, garnish with fresh raspberries and crème anglaise or whipped cream.

Chocolate Glaze:

12 ounces best quality semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped (Again, I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips)

9 ounces (18 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 ½ tablespoons (31 grams) light corn syrup

2 ½ tablespoons water

Place all ingredients in a medium-sized metal bowl. Place over a pan of steaming water. Stir frequently until mostly melted. Remove from the heat and set aside to finish melting, stirring once or twice until glaze is perfectly smooth. Let glaze cool to about 90 degrees before using.

These Chocolate Truffle Heart Cakes are being added/linked to Lisa’s Sweets for a Saturday.

Check out all the amazing sweets at Lisa’s blog--Sweet As Sugar Cookies.

Nutella Truffle Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies

I’m almost speechless with this one.  I “blame” this creation on one of my blog readers and an amazing, fantastic artist, Lisa Ernst. <- Check out her work.  Anyway, somehow we were chatting about the cookie love of our lives---chocolate chip.  Then she  mentioned how good a cookie with a chocolate truffle in the middle would be.  I was reminded of my most viewed blog post still to this date--Molten Lava Chocolate Chip Cookies (Nov. 2008).  I made chocolate chip cookies in ramekins with a Dove chocolate in the middle.  I then tried it with Hershey's Mint Truffle Kisses in the cookie.  Good, too!

While chatting with Lisa, she mentioned how good it sounded to have a chocolate truffle inside a chocolate chip cookie.  I began playing around with homemade truffles and chocolate chip cookie dough.  I whipped up some quick ganache with some bittersweet chocolate and cream and tried a few ganache truffles tucked inside a cookie as well as a couple placed on top of a cookie when it came out of the oven.  Both were great!

 

I liked how the ones with the truffle on top stayed thick and truffle-like.  Then something made me think of Nutella.  Nutella Truffles.  I’d never even really thought of that before.  I did a quick search on the internet for Nutella Truffles and found many different recipes.  I settled on an idea I’d found on a forum and traced this person’s recipe to one from one of Carole Bloom's books.  This one is quite simple.  Melt some chocolate, then stir in some Nutella.  Let it harden in the fridge, then form it in to balls.  It is such that you think it will be too hard, but roll some into a ball with a small cookie scoop and it works.  It’s messy but fun.  To combat a little bit of the smeary chocolate all over my hands, I rolls the balls in cocoa powder.  I put them on a plate and stuck them in the freezer.  Made my favorite cookie dough.  Chilled it for about an hour.  Then I began forming dough around the truffles.  I tried some inside, some on top of baked cookies and I tried one with dough in a ramekin with the Nutella truffle hidden inside.  These are really good!  If you are any kind of a Nutella lover, you must try them.  I know that World Nutella Day is coming up—February 5.  Celebrate!

The Nutella Truffles melted down on top of the hot cookie a little more, but it’s really good!

The ones with the Nutella truffle hiding inside—like striking gold!  That is good stuff.  As if that wasn’t enough, the cookies are loaded with dark chocolate chips and studded with chopped hazelnuts.  Then—the one baked in a ramekin—ooey, gooey and GREAT with a little ice cream on top!

Nutella Truffle Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (10 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon (4 ounces) granulated sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (5 ounces) light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups (8 1/2 ounces or 240 grams) all purpose flour

1/2 plus 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon coarse salt

12 ounces chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips), roughly chopped-roughly chopping is optional, but I like having chocolate all throughout the cookie)

1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped

In bowl of electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy (about 3 minutes).  Add the egg and vanilla and beat well (about 2 minutes).  Scrape sides of bowl.

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and whisk together.  Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture.  Do not overmix.  Just before it is all combined, add the chocolate chips and nuts and stir together until the flour just disappears.

Place the covered dough in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Nutella Truffles--

3 ounces dark chocolate, chopped (I used Lindt Excellence 70% dark chocolate)

6 tablespoons Nutella hazelnut spread (111 grams)

Melt the chocolate in a microwave-safe dish in 20 second intervals at 1/2 power in the microwave, stirring after each interval until melted and smooth (takes 1-2 minutes).  You could also use a double boiler on the stove to melt the chocolate.  Add the Nutella and stir until well combined and smooth.  Set the truffle mixture in the refrigerator for about an hour.  (If the chocolate is took hard to scoop in to balls, leave it sitting on the counter for 15 minutes or so.  Mine wasn’t too hard.

Scoop and form the chocolate/Nutella into about 3/4 inch balls.  It will be messy and feel like it’s melting in your hands.  You could roll the balls on a cutting board dusted with cocoa powder if you’d like.  Place the balls on a plate lined with waxed paper.  Freeze the balls for about 20 minutes.  (Makes about 12.)  The shape of the balls doesn’t have to be perfect.

To bake the cookies---

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  Take a Nutella Truffle and wrap cookie dough around it until completely covered.  Place on baking sheet.  Leave about 2 inches between each one, they will be big.  You can make smaller cookies (still about 1 ounce each) and place a frozen truffle on top of a baked cookie right out of the oven.  Or you can line the bottom of a ramekin with cookie dough.  Place a truffle in the center, then cover it with more cookie dough for a decadent, molten lava treat served with ice cream!  Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes.  Let sit on baking sheet for about 5 minutes.  Remove to wire rack to cool for as long as you can stand to wait. ;) 

 

Did you see that?

Oh my!