Muesli Cookies

My husband and I were recently visiting a farmstand in a local agricultural area. All I really wanted was some home-grown, fresh off the vine tomatoes. Thankfully they had those, but they also had many other interesting items. We picked up some hazelnut muesli, as I often have granola at breakfast and this would be similar. Well, my husband had other ideas: to use the muesli in a cookie.

That sounded great to me, and he sent a couple of different recipes. I chose this recipe, which gave you options. You could use muesli that you had on hand, or you could add typical muesli ingredients (oats, nuts, dried fruits) separately. I used the pre-made muesli but knew that the cookies would differ a lot based on which ingredients you chose to use.

These came together fast, and using the muesli I had there was less measuring. They don’t change shape much once baked, so some batches I flattened slightly and others I didn’t. They did come out of the oven looking a little plain, but they tasted really good. Not overly sweet, with great flavor from the hazelnut muesli. The only change I would make is that the pre-made muesli didn’t have as much dried fruit, so I would likely add some additional dried cranberries or cherries.

Muesli Cookies
1 cup butter, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/8 cups muesli

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Mix on medium until well combined. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Finally, add the muesli and stir on low to evenly incorporate into the dough.

Shape the dough into 1 tablespoon balls. Place them on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten the cookies slightly with the palm of your hand if desired.

Bake for 11-13 minutes, until the cookies are set and the edges begin to brown. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Luci's Morsels

Blackcurrant Thumbprints

Ok, I really need to do a better job of using the cookbooks that I have! I am so used to finding a recipe online and going with that. I had gotten this cookbook, Some of My Best Friends are Cookies, by Australian MasterChef winner Emelia Jackson. This book has fantastic recipes! Some of the ingredients are slightly different, so I have to make sure I am stocked with vanilla bean paste, hazelnuts, and those sorts of things.

This week I was determined to make something from this book. I had already ear-marked many recipes and I had some blackcurrant curd that I wanted to use, so this thumbprint recipe was the winner! The original recipe called for plum jam, but you could use any jam or curd that you would like. I also used a lemon instead of an orange, as I felt the lemon was a better accompaniment. 

These are different, with the addition of ground hazelnuts. I love hazelnuts and many recipes in this book calls for them, so I am happy. The recipe has you heat the curd/jam with a little citric acid, which I haven’t used. I looked online and it’s an acid, so I used a little lemon juice. Heating the curd helps it set; I was skeptical but it worked! This made about 20 cookies, and they are really picture perfect! They aren’t too sweet, but the hazelnut flavor shines through, so I am a big fan.

Blackcurrant Thumbprints
125 grams flour
100 grams hazelnuts, ground
½ teaspoon salt
120 grams butter, room temperature
60 grams sugar
Zest of one lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla paste

About 100 grams blackcurrant curd
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ground hazelnuts, and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, add the butter, sugar, lemon zest, and vanilla paste. Beat on medium for two minutes, until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir until the dough comes together.

Shape the dough into balls, 20-25 grams each. Flatten the balls slightly and then make an indentation in the top of each cookie with your thumb (or other device).

Bake for 10-12 minutes until barely browned along the edges. Once the cookies come out of the oven, press down to reshape the indentations. Allow the cookies to cool for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cookies are cool, make the filling. In a small saucepan, mix the curd/jam and lemon juice. Heat on medium until the mixture boils, and then boil one minute. Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool a minute or two. Carefully spoon the curd mixture into the indentation in the cooled cookies. Allow the filling to set before serving.

Recipe from Some of My Best Friends are Cookies by Emelia Jackson

German Nussecken Bars

When I was selecting cookies to make this season, I kept coming across European cookie recipes and they just sounded so good. Germany is known for their baking, and to this day I am sad that a local German bakery/café closed without them releasing a cookbook. Some of those recipes aren’t easy to replicate, but if I know what I am looking for it helps.

This recipe is for German Nut Corners (Nussecken) and it uses hazelnuts, a favorite of mine. You can use either almond or hazelnut flour, and while I used whole hazelnuts, I used almond flour as I had that on hand. The other ingredients are somewhat flexible. The original recipe called for apricot jam, and I ended up using apricot/pineapple preserves, and it was great. The jam just adds a little bit of flavor, and I think many different jams would work.

My biggest struggle with this recipe, if you can call it that, was what pan to use. The recipe called for a jelly roll pan, which the recipe said was 13” x 18”. That is a contradiction (unless sizes are different elsewhere) as a jelly roll pan is 10” x 15”. The other size is a half sheet pan. I knew it would be hard to spread the dough, so I used the jelly roll pan. That worked fine, and thankfully the cookies didn’t boil over while baking. It takes a little time to cut these and dip in chocolate, but it’s worth it. They aren’t as sweet as many American cookies, which is refreshing this time of year.

German Nussecken Bars
½ cup butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups flour
⅓ cup apricot jam

1 cup butter
5 tablespoon rum
1 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup whole hazelnuts, roasted and roughly chopped
2 cups almond/hazelnut flour

1 cup dark chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vegetable shortening

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a jelly roll pan (10” x 15”) with aluminum foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter and sugar and mix until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and stir to combine. Stir in the baking powder and salt, and then gradually add the flour, until the dough comes together. Press the dough evenly into the prepared pan. Dock the surface of the dough with the tines of a fork and then spread the base layer evenly with the apricot jam. If needed, you can heat up the jam slightly to ease in spreading.

Make the topping: in a medium saucepan, combine 1 cup butter, the rum, brown sugar, and vanilla. Heat over medium until the sugar is dissolved, but do not bring to a boil. Add the roasted and chopped hazelnuts and the almond/hazelnut flour to the melted butter mixture and stir to combine.

Spread the topping mixture evenly over the base crust.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the bars are golden. Allow the bars to cool completely, ideally overnight.

Using a sharp knife, cut the bars into squares and then triangles.

If desired, melt the chocolate a vegetable shortening to make a glaze and dip the corners of the cookies in the glaze or drizzle over part of the cookies. Allow the glaze to set before serving.  

Recipe from Bake It With Love

German Hazelnut Cookies

I was on holiday last week but back to work, baking, and everything this week. I’m not at my full schedule at work yet, but my colleague started recently so I am there to hopefully get her acquainted with our campus. I wanted to make cookies for her first day and I made these and then I made another batch, which I ended up taking. This only made about 18 cookies, and that seemed like too few!

These cookies look a lot like pecan sandies, and I suppose they are, as they are shortbread cookies with chopped nuts. In this case, I used hazelnuts rather than pecans. These were labelled as holiday cookies, but I don’t really agree. I see many recipes that are labelled as Christmas cookies or holiday cookies, but I think that people don’t bake a lot and thus the baking they do is around the holidays and thus everything is a holiday cookie.

These cookies are very easy, chopping the hazelnuts is the hardest component. Use a food processor if you can, as that is so much easier than trying to chop round hazelnuts. You flatten these cookies like peanut butter cookies, but then top them with sprinkled nuts, so you can’t really see how they were flattened. Don’t forget to flatten them though! I like the nutty flavor of these cookies, nice and crunchy! I would have liked my hazelnuts to be just a touch fresher, but perhaps I am really picky.

German Hazelnut Cookies
142 grams whole hazelnuts
113 grams butter, room temperature
50 grams sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
128 grams flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Place the hazelnuts in a food processor. Pulse the hazelnuts about 10 times to chop them. Reserve 1/4 of the chopped hazelnuts for the cookie topping and set the remaining 3/4 of the hazelnuts aside.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium-high until light. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix again to combine. With the mixer running on low, add the flour and salt and mix until almost combined. Add 3/4 of the chopped hazelnuts and stir to combine.

Shape the dough into 18 balls and place on the prepared cookie sheets. Using a fork, press the cookie down in two directions to flatten (similar to the crisscross you see on flattened peanut butter cookies). Top the cookies with the remaining chopped hazelnuts, pressing the hazelnut slightly into the dough to help them stick.

Bake for about 12-15 minutes. The edges of the cookies will be golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from International Desserts Blog

Cinnamon Hazelnut Cookies

A while ago, when my husband and I were exploring a different grocery store, we came across a package of cinnamon hazelnuts. I love hazelnuts and adding some cinnamon would just make them better. I figured that I would be able to find some sort of cookie to make that uses cinnamon hazelnuts, so we picked them up. I started looking for a good recipe, and I settled on this fairly simple hazelnut cookie.

This cookie was noted as a Christmas cookie, but I think it is quite universal. I used cinnamon sugar rather than festive sprinkles, and that’s really the only thing that would point to this being for Christmas. Change up the sprinkles and it would fit any different holiday. I decided to use my cinnamon hazelnuts and I added a small amount of cinnamon to the dough to accentuate that flavor.

This dough takes about 5 minutes to make. I had forgotten to make the dough, so I quickly put it together one night about 9 pm (which is super late for this early riser). I ground the whole cinnamon hazelnuts in a food processor so that takes about 30 seconds, although it is 30 seconds that the cats hate me. I refrigerated the dough overnight and the next day they were ready, although still a bit pliable. The cinnamon sugar does get a little melted while baking, but there isn’t too much of it. These cookies are lovely, not super sweet, but with great buttery flavor.

Cinnamon Hazelnut Cookies
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup ground cinnamon hazelnuts
Cinnamon sugar
1 egg, beaten

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, egg, and salt on medium until well combined. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add the ground hazelnuts and stir until combined.

Shape the dough into a log about 2-1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Unwrap the dough and brush with beaten egg. Press cinnamon sugar over the dough log. Slice the dough log into ¼” slices. Place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 9-11 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Recipe from Kitchen Geisha via Allrecipes

White Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Blondies

My husband and I have taken very limited trips around the state the past year and a half. One of the places we have visited is Langley, which is on Whidbey Island. To get to Whidbey Island, you can either take the ferry, or drive up and get on the island via Deception Pass. I don’t feel comfortable on the ferry, so we drive to the island, which is honestly not too bad. Deception Pass is beautiful, and it’s a lovely, scenic drive.

Where we’ve stayed in Langley is across the street and down from a grocery store. It’s a fun store, a combination of basic grocery items and specialty items. We don’t like to use the credit card for super tiny purchases, so we saw these orange honey hazelnuts from Holmquist Orchards and picked them up. I often buy hazelnuts from them, so I knew that I would enjoy this different offering. Now, what to make with these orange honey hazelnuts?

In looking through recipes I had saved, I came across this recipe for Blondies with Pistachio and Lemon Zest. I used the orange honey hazelnuts instead and substituted orange zest for lemon. I do think these would work with traditional hazelnuts, or the original pistachios as the recipe originally stated. The method of making these cookies was different, and I added a few more details in my write-up. White chocolate can be fussy, so make sure it doesn’t get too hot! These are very similar to cake bars, and I was a little concerned that the mixing method was strange, but these turned out so well. The hazelnuts and orange flavors come shining through!

White Chocolate Orange Hazelnut Blondies
7 ounces butter
7 ounces white chocolate
3 eggs
6 ounces sugar
4.4 ounces flour
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
3.5 ounces orange honey hazelnuts
Zest of 1 orange

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” square pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter and white chocolate, in 30 second increments, stirring frequently. Once smooth, set aside to cool for 2-3 minutes. In a large mixer bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, flour, and salt on medium until light. Add the melted chocolate mixture and stir on low to combine. Add the hazelnuts and orange zest and stir with a spatula to incorporate.

Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until set and golden brown on top. Allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Recipe adapted from Sweet Paul Magazine

Nutella Biscotti

I really love the combination of hazelnut and chocolate! Sometimes that comes in the form of my own combination of ingredients, and sometimes it’s in the form of Nutella. I have made quite a few recipes with Nutella, and I continue to find new and different recipes to try. Now, I will be honest that biscotti aren’t my favorite cookies, but I have learned that make them more to my liking. I’m not a fan of dry cookies, so I tend to shorten the second baking time. They are drier, but not as dry as some biscotti.

The recipe for these biscotti is very simple, and it makes a petite batch. Honestly, 3 tablespoons of Nutella aren’t that much, so they don’t have a strong chocolate flavor. I did make one change to the recipe. The original recipe called for walnuts and it seemed very strange to use anything but chopped hazelnuts in this cookie. I know other nuts would work in a pinch, but hazelnuts are the appropriate choice here.

Biscotti is the cookie you want to make if you don’t have a lot of time. I think I had these started and finished in under an hour. They are simply mix, shape, and bake, and I suppose that chopping the nuts is the most labor-intensive part of this recipe. My dough was sticky, and I did end up adding a little extra flour to reduce the softness/stickiness. I baked mine just a few minutes less the second time, and they are crunchy but not so dry. As I said, they aren’t so sweet, but it doesn’t feel like you are missing anything!

Nutella Biscotti
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons Nutella
1 egg +2 yolks
1 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the sugar, Nutella, and eggs on medium until combined. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir on low until the dough comes together. Stir in the chopped hazelnuts. If the dough is too liquid, add a small amount of flour and mix until the dough comes together.

Divide the dough into halves and shape each half into a log, about 3 inches wide.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the biscotti from the oven and cool 5 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 275 degrees.

Slice the logs into cookies, each about an inch thick. Return the cut biscotti to the baking sheet.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until dried to your liking. Remove from the oven and cool before serving.

Recipe from Pickled Plum

Pear Hazelnut Butter Bars

When I originally came across this recipe, it looked a lot different. I actually have made the salted caramel butter bars that are the origin of the recipe I found, and the variation I found used Nutella. I pinned this, but I figured that I would make a change somehow. My first thought was to try a type of fancy peanut butter, something like a cinnamon peanut butter or something. I then realized that this recipe would also work with jam or preserves, so I planned to make it this month with all my other jam recipes.

I went to the store to look at the offerings, and in the end my husband found the preserves that I ended up using. We were by the cheese counter and found a jar of pear hazelnut fruit pâté. I’m not really sure how they define their concoction, but it’s most similar to thick preserves. I knew it would work, and I decided that adding some chopped hazelnuts to the top would be wonderful. I also halved the original recipe which used an entire pound of butter! (This is not health food!)

This dough is simple and comes together quickly. I think it took less time to make the dough than it took to heat the oven. You use about a third for the crust and 2/3 for the topping, but even if you divide the dough in halves, it will work. Don’t stress too much about it. I do wish that I had a little more pear hazelnut preserves, but I had just enough. The only challenge with these bars is that they don’t really brown, so it is hard to tell when they are baked through. I waited until the hazelnuts looked toasted and called it good. These bars are so good with the fruit and hazelnuts. I wouldn’t say that the pear is a distinct flavor, but the fruity flavor in these bars is wonderful.

Pear Hazelnut Butter Bars
1 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
½ cup Pear Hazelnut preserves (or other)
¼ cup chopped hazelnuts

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line an 8” square pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and powdered sugar on medium until light. Stir in the vanilla. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, stirring just until the dough comes together. Wrap 2/3 of the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate while you bake the base of the bars. Press the remaining 1/3 of the dough into the bottom of the prepared pan.

Bake for about 14 minutes, until the crust is set. The base will not be browned. Allow the crust to cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes before proceeding. Leave the oven on.

Spread the pear hazelnut preserves onto the partially baked and cooled base. Remove the remaining dough from the refrigerator and crumble the dough on top of the preserves. Top the crumbled dough with the chopped hazelnuts.

Bake for an additional 25-35 minutes, until the hazelnuts are golden, and the topping is set. Allow to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Recipe inspired by Cookies and Cups

Hazelnut Cookies

It’s interesting what is popular, and thus sold out, each week at the grocery store. I understand that yeast is hard to find, but I don’t typically have time to bake with yeast, so that’s no different for me. The stores seem to be out of flour, which I could certainly use, but I knew I was low on flour, so I had picked several recipes that don’t require too much flour. I suppose I could always use bread flour, that might be interesting.

This recipe doesn’t make a lot of cookies, about 2 dozen, and thus uses 1-1/2 cups of flour. Some of the flour is replaced with ground hazelnuts or hazelnut flour, which helps. I have almond flour but not hazelnut flour. We had blanched hazelnuts at home, which was helpful. I can blanch most nuts, but don’t even try it with hazelnuts, it’s too hard. I roasted mine in the oven, which made them nice and buttery. Be careful that the hazelnuts don’t burn. After roasting the hazelnuts, I was able to pick away the last bits of skin, too.

This is a shortbread cookie, with hazelnuts. They are so simple, just five ingredients. I didn’t make any substitutions, but I did need to add a couple of tablespoons of water to help the dough come together. You shape the cookies and then flatten them with a fork, as you would a peanut butter cookie. They bake a longer time, about 16-18 minutes, but that is not uncommon with shortbread. When I was shaping these cookies, they smelled so good, and even smelled like they contain honey. While they have no honey, they have a wonderful, nutty hazelnut flavor. It’s such a simple recipe, but they are fantastic.

Hazelnut Cookies

1/2 cup blanched hazelnuts

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Toast the hazelnut in the oven or microwave, until fragrant. Cool completely. Once cool, grind the hazelnuts in a food processor. Do not grind them into a paste.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until light. Add the flour, ground hazelnuts, and salt and mix on low until a dough forms. If needed, a 1-3 tablespoons of water to help form the dough.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and place on the prepared baking sheets. Press the balls with the tines of a folk to flatten.

Bake 16-18 minutes, until golden. Allow cookies to cool completely on a wire rack.

Recipe from Martha Stewart

Nutella Hazelnut Cookies

My workload this week has been very challenging and while everyone at work says it’s ok if I don’t bring cookies, it would be very strange not making cookies. I had planned to make a bar cookie this week, but I didn’t think I would have enough time. I got home from dinner the night I was going to bake, and it was already 6:30 or 7:00 and I still needed to write a letter of recommendation for a student. I decided to go with Plan B, because I always have Nutella.

I knew I had the ingredients for these cookies, but perhaps not enough hazelnuts. I figured that would be ok since only ½ cup of hazelnuts go into the batter. As I was dividing and conquering and make the dough one day and baked the next, I figured I could always pick up more hazelnuts the next day. In the end, I decided to just roll the cookies in powdered sugar, which is less fussy. This dough is so very soft, so it is critical to refrigerate the dough so that it has a chance to set up properly.

The dough came together quickly; the only extra time it took was to toast and chop the hazelnuts. When I was baking these cookies, they reminded me a lot of other cookies I’ve made in the past. I used to make a cookie with raspberry chocolate chips that you would melt down. It was the best cookie, but they stopped making that type of chips several years ago. These cookies, with Nutella, are equally as good. Ok, the powdered sugar is a little messy and you are at risk for having powdered sugar down your shirt. I think it is worth the risk.

Nutella Hazelnut Cookies

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup butter, room temperature

1-1/3 cups sugar

1-¼ cups Nutella

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

1/3 cup milk

½ cup hazelnuts, toasted and finely chopped

Powdered sugar

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and Nutella on medium until combined. Add the eggs, vanilla, and espresso powder and mix on medium to combine. With the mixer running on low, add the flour mixture alternatively with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. When the dough has almost come together, add the chopped hazelnuts and stir until the dough comes together. The dough will be very soft.

Remove the dough from the mixing bowl and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4” balls and roll in the powdered sugar. Place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the cookies are soft in the middle but set on the edges. Allow the cookies to cook on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Brown Eyed Baker