I Know You Want To Try These Frosted Nutella Cookies

A couple of weeks ago, I dared to purchase a jar of Nutella. Hell, I even put it on the grocery list. It seems like my favorite addiction, Pinterest, keeps throwing the stuff in my face every time I venture over to someone’s Food board, and someone somewhere mentioned dipping Oreos into the stuff.

Since then I haven’t been able to get it out of my brain, so I decided to put some in my mouth in the form of these delicious cookies. I found several recipes for Nutella cookies online, but I make it a point to only use recipes as a guideline for ingredient ratios. I therefore ended up with a deliciously chewy, thin dark chocolate Nutella cookie covered in a layer of coffee-Nutella frosting. Whee!

For cookies:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 cup Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 cup ground oats (I took some regular quick-cooking oats and obliterated them in the food processor)

2 1/2 cups sugar

3 sticks or 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, y’all (I know, I know!)

1/2 teaspoon Mexican or regular vanilla extract

4 heaping tablespoons Nutella

2 eggs

For frosting:

1 cup of Nutella

1/2 packet of Starbucks Via instant coffee or anything similar (I used the Italian roast)

1/2 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 375° F and line a baking sheet or two with aluminum foil. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and pulverized oats in a medium-sized bowl. In a separate large bowl, cream together your crapton of butter, sugar, and Nutella. Don’t forget to lick that Nutella spoon! Add the eggs and vanilla and mix it all together until it’s smooth. Gradually add in the dry ingredients and incorporate well, but don’t over-mix or your cookies might be a little too chewy. Stick the bowl of batter in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes; it’s easier to handle this way. Roll ping pong ball-sized chunks of dough in your hands and squish them to make them into little circles, then place on the baking sheet. People keep telling me to use a glass to smoosh the dough into circles, but 1) that dirties another dish and 2) I find this to be way easier. Place the baking sheets full o’ cookies into the oven and bake for 7-8 minutes. Repeat with the remaining dough. This should make about 60 cookies, give or take a little.

While the cookies are baking, mix the instant coffee into the milk. Because this is supposed to go in hot liquid, you can either use warm milk and let it cool before stirring it into the Nutella, or you can do what I did and shake it up! It doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t dissolve all the way, because you’re going to mix it right into the Nutella. Use as much or as little milk as you need to achieve your preferred frosting consistency. If  the coffee taste isn’t quite strong enough, you can really just mix the instant coffee right into the frosting.

Let the cookies cool and try not to eat them all before you can frost them. This is where I usually start eating the leftover cookie dough, because I laugh in the face of Salmonella. Now, frost those cooled cookies and enjoy with friends. Or eat them all yourself, that’s okay too. Don’t forget to turn the oven off.