Nutella Stuffed Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Valentine’s Day special cookies for your loved ones ♥️♥️ With goodness of whole wheat and unrefined cane sugar (jaggery powder), this is a healthy and delicious bake!!
It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and what better resonates with this special day of love, it’s definitely chocolate. Do any of you believe in celebrating Valentine’s Day? Or, like for many of you, this is just another day, and you believe in celebration of love each n every day of life?
Image courtesy – Pexels.com
Anyhow, it’s a matter of personal choice. And I believe that the definition of love has certainly evolved over the years. While making your loved one or family members was a thing about Valentine’s, now it is more about self-love.
Nutella Cookies – The Background & Inspiration
The times have changed, and people, especially women, have started to identify themselves as important. There was a time when a woman was encouraged to be a care taker of the family (who she still is) along with making her feel low in many aspects. But now, self love or self respect is what every woman wants to live with.
So, that’s why many of us now believe in the concept of celebrating “self-love”. It is important to know that if a woman is happy, that happiness is reflected on to the other members of the family. So, this Valentine’s Day, make a pledge to love yourself so that you can keep everyone else happy too.
Similar Recipes
I have a few chocolate based recipes which are the perfect fit for Valentine Day treats if you want to show your love for someone special:
- Whole Wheat Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Whole Wheat Blueberry Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Rose Syrup (Rooh Afza) & Cardamom Whole Wheat Jaggery Cookies
If you are looking for an eggless bake for Valentine’s Day, check this out:
To celebrate this special day, I now bring to you another recipe that I have created using chocolate chips and everyone’s favorite Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut spread. It is the Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe.
Nutella Stuffed Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
The Inspiration
My house smells of cocoa a lot as I keep on baking chocolate (chip) cookies every now and then. But I had a keen desire to try something different this time. Having seen a lot of pictures on social media with chocolate oozing out from cookies, I would always dream of making them, even though I am as much of a maniac when it comes to cleaning the mess that those cookies might create if handed over to my kiddo. LOL.
But the baker in me went ahead and finally tried creating it. My kiddo was unwell that day, and she had a strong desire to eat some store bought chocolate dessert. So, making this at home was fun as well as a kind of savior. Looking at the cookies, the expression she gave was priceless!
Nutella Stuffed Cookies – Tips & Tricks
These are some tips and tricks you can check before baking these cookies!
Baking Time Tips
I baked the cookies for around 15 minutes, since I always felt that these are still under baked. But I would suggest you to take out the cookies at 13-14 minutes of time, as the cookies tend to set after taking them out and keeping them in the room temperature for 10-15 minutes. The chocolate was also not oozing out for the same reason. But for me, I felt it was the perfect texture of the melted Nutella inside the cookie, as it was not dripping, but still soft. If you want the dripping consistency, you can reduce the baking time by 1-2 minutes.
I have stuffed the classic chocolate chip cookies (which has been by far the most famous recipe of mine) with around a teaspoon of Nutella ball here. I had prepared the Nutella balls beforehand and kept them in the freezer to set before I started making my cookie dough.
Nutella Balls Freezing Tips
To be honest, you can keep the Nutella balls a bit longer in the freezer (may be half an hour more), so that it is set properly to be used while stuffing them in the cookie dough balls
If at any time you feel the Nutella balls are melting, keep them back in the freezer and use again. The last cookie that I made has some Nutella layers seen on top of the cookie, since it was not in a frozen state but kind of melted. So, make sure to freeze the Nutella balls if they get soft while stuffing them in cookies.
Time For The Recipe
Also, continuing the tradition, here comes my eighteenth recipe under My Julie & Julia Project. For those who don’t know, I had started this project last year, under which I had planned to post 100 recipes from my kitchen by the end of the year 2019. But since I got busy with other priorities in life, I have planned to continue the tradition in 2020. So, this is the Recipe #18.
Nutella Stuffed Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
As always, I have used whole wheat flour and unrefined cane sugar (jaggery) powder to make this recipe healthy. The chocolate chips I used are the semi-sweet ones from Trader Joe’s, but you can use any of those available at hand.
Let’s make this Valentine’s Day beautiful, first for ourselves, so that we can make it even more beautiful for our loved ones. Have a great day and happy baking everyone!!
Nutella Stuffed Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
Instructions
- Line a plate or any flat tray with parchment paper. Scoop out 12 balls of Nutella, 1 tsp for each ball, and place on the lined tray.
- Freeze the tray containing Nutella balls in the freezer till the time the dough for cookies is prepared (I would recommend to keep half an hour more).
- Preheat oven to 375 degree F.
- Meanwhile, mix the butter and unrefined cane sugar till the sugar is completely blended with the butter. I prefer to mix by hand since I don't use mixer. Whisk or spatula is not helpful in this case, since the butter is not in a completely melted state.
- Add in the egg to this mixture.
- Now add vanilla essence to the above mixture and stir till all the ingredients are uniformly mixed. The wet ingredients mixture is now ready.
- For the dry ingredients, mix in whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt to the wet mixture.
- Finally add the chocolate chips and give it a good mix with hand. The dough will be a little loose at this stage, so it is advisable to put the dough in the fridge for at least 10-15 minutes.
- Remove the cookie dough from the refrigerator and the Nutella balls tray from the freezer. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Take around 2-3 tbsp of cookie dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the cookie dough ball and place the Nutella ball in the center. Then cover the Nutella ball with the cookie dough completely and make a ball again.
- Then flatten the dough ball (lightly press, we don't flatten this too much, as Nutella should not ooze out from the cookie) and place on the baking tray. I was able to make 12 cookies with the prepared dough.
- Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes in the preheated oven, or till you see creases on top of the cookies. The cookies will be soft to touch, but once cooled, they will be fine. It took me exactly 15 minutes for baking. If you want softer cookies and Nutella dripping out from cookies once cracked, bake the cookies for 1-2 minutes less.
- Remove the cookies from the oven, and allow them to cool for at least 10-15 minutes.
- The Nutella stuffed whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are now ready to be served warm or these can be stored in an air-tight container!! I refrigerated the cookies for around an hour to stiffen up the gooey consistency of the chocolate chips and Nutella in the warm cookies before storing them at room temperature. You can enjoy the warm cookies fresh out of the oven too, keep a tissue paper handy for the drips, LOL!!
Notes
- Whole Wheat Flour – Feel free to replace whole wheat flour with the same quantity of all-purpose flour. If the cookie dough feels a little loose, add ~ 1/4th cup more of all-purpose flour.
- Unrefined Cane Sugar – If Unrefined Cane Sugar is not available, you can replace it with equal amount of refined sugar.
- Egg – To make the recipe eggless, I would advise to replace the egg with either of these two options:
- Chia Seed Gel (Mix 1 Tbsp powdered Chia seeds with 3 Tbsp water, and let it soak for 5 minutes)
- Flax Seed Gel (Mix 1 Tbsp powdered Flax seeds with 3 Tbsp water, and let it soak for 5 minutes)
Method (Step-by-step with pictures)
- Line a plate or any flat tray with parchment paper. Scoop out 12 balls of Nutella, 1 tsp for each ball, and place on the lined tray. Freeze the tray containing Nutella balls in the freezer till the time you finish preparing the cookie dough. I would recommend to keep half an hour more.
- Preheat oven to 375 degree F. Meanwhile, mix in the butter and unrefined cane sugar (jaggery powder), till the sugar is completely blended with the butter. I prefer to mix by hand since I don’t use mixer. I don’t prefer whisk or spatula in this case, since butter is not in a completely melted state.
- Add in the egg to this mixture. Next, add the the vanilla essence and stir till all the ingredients are uniformly mixed. The wet ingredients mixture is now ready.
- For the dry ingredients, mix in whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt to the wet mixture.
- Finally add the chocolate chips and give it a good mix with hand. The dough will be a little loose at this stage, so it is advisable to put the dough in the fridge for at least 10-15 minutes.
- Remove the cookie dough from the refrigerator and the Nutella balls tray from the freezer. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Take around 2-3 tbsp of cookie dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the cookie dough ball and place the Nutella ball in the center.
- Then cover the Nutella ball with the cookie dough completely and make a ball again. Then flatten the dough ball (lightly press, we don’t flatten this too much, as Nutella should not ooze out from the cookie) and place on the baking tray. I was able to make 12 cookies with the prepared dough.
- Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes in the preheated oven, or till you see creases on top of the cookies. The cookies will be soft to touch, but once cooled, they will be fine.
- It took me exactly 15 minutes for baking. If you want softer cookies and Nutella dripping out from cookies once cracked, bake the cookies for 1-2 minutes less. Remove the cookies from the oven, and allow them to cool for at least 10-15 minutes.
The Nutella stuffed chocolate chip cookies are now ready to be served warm. You can even store these in an air-tight container!! I refrigerated the cookies for around an hour to stiffen up the gooey consistency of the chocolate chips. And also Nutella in the warm cookies before storing them at room temperature. You can enjoy the warm cookies fresh out of the oven too. Just keep a tissue paper handy for the drips, LOL!!
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