Chocolate & Hazelnut Cookies

My milk chocolate & hazelnut cookies are quick and easy bake, making them ideal for baking with children. A simple bake that not only tastes great but can be prepared and baked in minutes.

These best chocolate & hazelnut cookies are one of my favourite biscuits. However, I do prefer to make my own as I find shop bought just a bit too hard and really not what I want from a cookie.

Also store bought cookies rarely contain enough hazelnuts for me. I like my cookies loaded in hazelnuts, there should be just as much hazelnut as there are chocolate chips.

These homemade chocolate cookies are a great quick and straightforward bake. There’s little effort involved in pulling together a cookie batter and after a quick bake in the oven you have a far superior biscuit to anything you can buy shop bought.

These easy chocolate & hazelnut cookies are great for a child’s first solo bake. Cookies are forgiving, there’s no uniform shape, they are not meant to be dainty. For an extra special treat, my kids enjoy these with my 2 Ingredient Nutella Hot Chocolate.

Why you’ll love this recipe

• Quick to prepare and bake, these cookies can be cooked and out of the oven ready to eat in less than 30 minutes.
• The ideal bake with children as this is a simple bake that most kids can handle on their own with just a little help from adults to get them in and out of the oven.
• This recipe easily makes 25-30 cookies so bake some cookies to enjoy now and freeze some to enjoy another day.

Recipe ingredients

• Sugar: I use a combination of granulated and light muscovado sugar as it has a great molasses flavour that really works in these chocolate cookies. A good substitution would be soft light brown sugar or a golden caster sugar.
• Butter: I use unsalted butter, but you could also use salted butter. Don’t be tempted to use margarine as you won’t get the same flavour or set in the cookies.
• Vanilla Extract: adds great flavour to these chocolate cookies, you could also use vanilla paste. Vanilla essence would also work but it won’t have the same depth of flavor.
• Eggs: use 1 large beaten eggs in this recipe as it helps to bind the cookie dough.
• Flour: plain flour (all purpose) is used in this recipe.
• Bicarbonate of Soda: is added to give the cookies a little rise and create a light, soft cookie.
• Chocolate Chips: I use milk chocolate chips to make milk chocolate and hazelnut cookies, but you can use dark chocolate, white chocolate, chocolate orange chips – whichever you prefer.
• Hazelnuts: add great crunch to these chocolate cookies. You can swap the hazelnuts for any other nut, or leave them out entirely if you prefer.

TOP TIP: To intensify the hazelnut flavour in these cookies, one of my readers Ro, recommends roasting the hazelnuts first and also adding a little hazelnut extract. I’ll be trying this next time I bake them.

How to make chocolate hazelnuts cookies

• Preheat the oven to 190C/170CFan.
• Place the butter and both sugars into a bowl and beat well until you get a creamy mixture.
• Meanwhile place the hazelnuts in a sealed plastic bag and bash up gently with a rolling pin to create small chunks of nut.

• Once you have beaten the butter and sugars together, beat in the vanilla extract and the egg, mixing well to combine.
• Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt to the bowl and continue to mix well until you have a rough dough.

• Add the milk chocolate chips and hazelnuts to the dough and mix until you have a well combined dough.

• Pull together small golf ball sized balls of the cookie dough and place these on a tray lined with baking parchment. Space the cookies well apart as they will spread in the oven. However do not flatten out the balls of dough.
• Once you have shaped all the cookies, you should get 25-30 cookies from this mix, place the trays into the hot oven. Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, they should be a little soft in the middle.

TOP TIP: The cookies will spread in the oven, so leave plenty space between each ball of cookie dough.

• Remove the cookies from the oven, place the tray on a wire cooling rack and allow to cool for 10 minutes and set a little.
• After 10 minutes gently place the cookies directly onto the wire rack to completely set and cool.
• Once cool store in an airtight container.

TOP TIP: If you want your cookies to look a uniform size, or if some have really spread in the oven, I have a simple trick to fixing this. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven they will still be soft and pliable. Get a circular cookie cutter and place smooth side down over the cookie, taking care not to touch the sides of the cookie. Now working in a circular motion, move the cutter and gently reshape the cookies.

Recipe variations

This recipe is simple, a basic cookie dough to which I’ve added the flavours of chocolate, hazelnut and vanilla. That’s what I like about a basic recipe, you can play around with it and add the flavours that you enjoy and like to eat.

• Chocolate Chips – use whatever flavour you enjoy: milk; dark; white; chocolate orange. Or mix up your flavours, so long as you end up with 140g of chocolate chips.
• Nuts – I love adding nuts to cookies for added crunch. Try chopped almonds; pecans; brazil or macadamia nuts.
• Dried Fruits – raisin; sultanas; currants; cranberry; blueberry; all work with a basic cookie.
• Citrus Burst – ramp up the fruity flavour by adding some citrus zest. When it comes to flavouring lemon; lime; or orange zest can transform a simple cookie.

Useful hints & tips

1. Line the baking tray with a silicone baking sheet or baking parchment as this will stop the cookies sticking to the tray.
2. For anyone with a nut allergy, simply leave out the hazelnuts and increase the chocolate chips to 200g if you wish.
3. Allergy advice: for comprehensive and detailed allergy advice go to Allergy UK.

FAQs

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Additional recipe suggestions

If you like this recipe then why not try some of my favorite simple biscuit recipes:

• Date Oat Cookies with Ginger
• Orange Butter Biscuits
• Lemon Butter Biscuits
• Custard Creams
• Ginger & Chilli Biscuits
• No-bake Mars Bar Slice

If you enjoyed this bake have a look at our Ultimate Guide to Baking with Kids, full of great recipe suggestions for baking with children.