Chocolate Chip Brown Butter Nutella-Stuffed Cookies with Sea Salt

Recipe for these cookies is from Ambitious Kitchen, with a few minor changes.

Ok, so let's talk about these cookies. They have all the right buzzwords. Chocolate chip? Check. Brown butter? Check. Nutella? Check check check. Sea salt? Too late I've eaten 1,000 of them and am now in a food coma. 

Full disclosure, these cookies require more work than I previously thought, but are SO WORTH IT. Just like you probably shouldn't eat more than one, but you do and again...worth it! So what are you waiting for? Let's get started!

Ingredients

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon of salt

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter

1 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 tablespoon plain greek yogurt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips*

3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

1 jar of Nutella, chilled in refrigerator

Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

*the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips and 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips. To cut a little bit of the sweetness and cost I eliminated the milk chocolate chips and upped the semi-sweet and the dark.

First thing's first - put that nutella in the fridge to chill. I forgot this step and ended up having to wait to make these. 

Next get your dry ingredients together - in a large bowl sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine and set aside.

Place the butter in a sauce pan on medium heat, whisking constantly. (This is the part that I was kind of nervous about. I wasn't sure if I would know when 'brown butter' happened and I would just end up burning it.) If you keep your eye on it, you'll know when it turns brown and smells like caramel. It's a very clear transformation that takes place. Take it off the heat and immediately transfer to your mixing bowl. Wait for it to cool, about 10-15 minutes for me. Do yourself a favor, if you transfer the butter into a metal mixing bowl, maybe don't touch the bottom to see if it's hot? The answer is, it is still scalding hot and now you no longer have fingerprints. 

Once the butter cools, add the sugars and mix until combined. It will look like a bit like wet sand. Scrape down the sides and add the egg yolk, vanilla, and greek yogurt. Mixture will come out looking smooth and silky.

The next step is to slowly at the dry ingredients. With your mixer on low, add the flour, baking soda and salt a little at a time. You may want to switch to your dough hook for the step, I didn't because I'm lazy. When all the dry ingredients are incorporated, you'll be left with a thick dough. Fold in the chocolate chips (i used my hands for this - my favorite cooking tools). Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take the dough out and nutella of the refrigerator. Spoiler: this is the tricky part. It took me a while to get the hang of it. Roll about 1.5 tablespoons of dough into a ball. Flatten it down in your hands. Add a teaspoon of the chilled nutella to the center and fold the dough over. You want to make sure none of the nutella is peaking out. You can grab more dough to fill up any gaps. Then roll the dough back into a ball and place it on your baking sheet. 

Gently tamp down the dough with your fingers. I made my cookies a little bigger, so I fit 9 to a sheet pan. Place in the oven for 9-11 minutes (or 15-18 if you made gigantic ones like me), until the cookies turn golden.

Take the cookies out and sprinkle them with a touch of sea salt. Move them to a cooling rack to completely cool down.

Lastly, eat and enjoy!