Happy New Year you guys! I’ve taken over my husband’s duty of moving the marker on our calendar every day for the past few months. Last year there have been days where I’ve been waiting for hours to pass by and a few where I wanted to sit down and capture time. There is a reason behind my anticipation, my impatience and why I have been posting less than usual. We’re expecting our little one to arrive later this month. Apart from losing a battle to nausea and all day long ‘morning’ sickness in the first trimester, it’s been a beautiful phase. After doting over baby cousins, nephews and nieces and possibly every chubby baby being wheeled in a pram, it still has to sink in that we’ll be having one of our own.
So let’s talk about cravings. After the first trimester my diet hadn’t changed much. I’ve always loved food, so I was waiting to see what I would prefer to eat during this phase. I’d be asked by my family about which of the 4 S’s my tastebuds preferred – sweet, spicy, salty or savoury. Omitting salty, I’d have a different answer every time. Honestly, I did find it a bit odd why I wasn’t having the stereotypical cravings that I’ve read in books and seen on the telly. However, since chocolate has always been my weakness, I was finding it difficult not to use pregnancy as an excuse to overindulge my notorious sweet tooth. There was one day when I decided to spoil and devour a massive chocolate bar all by myself. The nausea that settled in for the rest of the day ensured I wouldn’t repeat such an episode.
Have you come across recipes that makes you want to start cooking right away? Or will make you dash to the grocery if you don’t have the ingredients? You just have to start immediately and not bookmark and pin it for later. That’s the effect this video by Top With Cinnamon had. These cookies had my chocolate driven brain go bonkers. Cocoa-rich, chocolate chip and stuffed with Nutella. Oh, and salted caramel. And topped off with sea-salt. Come to think of it, so many dessert recipes I’ve read in 2013 featured salted caramel. And brown butter. There’s a great video with step-by-step instructions to make salted caramel from scratch. If you have time, it’s worth the extra 10 minutes. Plus you can drizzle the leftover sauce over any dessert or milkshake. Or just finish it off with a spoon like we did. It is astounding to think that a sauce made from salt and sugar can taste this marvellous.
I wanted to make massive cookies. Big enough to share and big enough to satiate my gluttony. The method is as simple as melting butter and folding in the other ingredients. By the time your oven reaches the required temperature, you’d have finished preparing and assembling the cookies. The latter bit is what might take a bit of time. You need to flatten cookie dough, add a blob of Nutella and a spoonful of salted caramel in the centre and top it off with more flattened cookie dough.
I baked my cookies slightly longer than what the recipe called for because I was making them larger. The core was not as meltingly divine as I hoped it to be. Nevertheless, I probably wolfed down 2 cookies all by myself. It is a flavour explosion! Cocoa bitterness, caramel sweetness, sea-salt self-explanatory saltiness. Perhaps next time I should add Cayenne Pepper to the dough. I liked having the cookies warm. They were chewy and crumbly and all things heavenly. Truly, I am out of words to describe the flavour. You just need to seat yourself with a plate of these and be prepared to be rolling your eyes backwards with every bite. These are one of the best chocolate cookies I’ve had in a long long time. Cookie Monster would absolutely love these.
I have to show you the core that I’ve been raving about. So are you off to bake these beauties?
Salted Caramel and Nutella Stuffed Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe from Top With Cinnamon
INGREDIENTS
- ½ cup butter
- 1 ¼ cups brown sugar
- ½ cup cocoa powder (I used half regular and half extra dark cocoa powder)
- 2 eggs
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¾ tsp baking powder
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup dark chocolate chips
- fleur de sel, for sprinkling
- approx. ½ cup (8 tbsp) Nutella
- 1 recipe for Salted caramel OR 15-16 caramel-filled chocolates
METHOD
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a medium saucepan, melt the butter.
- Take off the heat and stir in the brown sugar and eggs.
- Add the cocoa, salt, and baking powder.
- Stir until well combined.
- Add the flour and stir until well combined.
- Fold in chocolate chips.
- Take 1 heaped Tbsp of dough and roll into a fat disc shape. Using your finger make a large indentation at the centre of the dough; fill the indentation with a small blob of Nutella (like ¼ tsp ish), and top it up with the still-warm salted caramel (or a caramel-filled chocolate).
- Top with a flattened tablespoon of dough, and seal the edges.
- Sprinkle with fleur de sel, and bake for 8-10 minutes.
Bake, devour and enjoy!
Have a good food day.