Nutella stuffed butter cookies and Nutella swirl cookies, to celebrate a sweet victory!

Nutella can make me weak in the knees. Mostly I end up eating huge gobs of it straight from the jar ( Sssh! don't tell!) but then sometimes I save it ( well some of it atleast) to bake stuff with, like these oh-my-goodness-so-awesome Nutella Brownies  or these buttery crunchy Nutella swirl cookies as well as cookies stuffed with gooey Nutella. These golden brown swirly beauties are my second entry to my week long sweet celebration, Yes, I will be posting one sweet dish everyday of the week till Saturday! Joining me today is

Sarah of Spoonful of Delight with Marble Cupcakes and Sneha of Inspirational art of cooking with chocolate muffins! if you want to join in the sweetness, just leave a comment with a sweet dish you posted this week and I'll include it in my post the next day :)Would be nice if you could add a link back to this mini-event in your post too.

I was thrilled to bits that these chocolate chunk cookies a.k.a World Peace cookies and Nutella swirl cookies were sold out almost as soon as they were placed on the table at the bake sale for Japan  this Saturday- in about 10 mins flat!

I started out making the Purple Foodie's Nutella Pinwheel cookies, but didn't roll the logs lenghtwise, hence my cookies were more like little swirls than pinwheels. I also used part of the dough to make cookies stuffed with Nutella. 

Nutella Swirl Butter Cookies and Nutella stuffed cookies

Recipe Source: The recipe is straight from the wonderful Shaheen of Purple foodie's Nutella Pinwheel cookies from here My few notes are in brackets.

Yield: 25-30 cookies

125g / 1 stick salted butter, (softened until it's squishy, but not too melted. If you are using unsalted butter, then add 1/4th tsp salt)
½ cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 heaped cup sifted flour ( I used 1 cup +1 tablespoon)
¼ cup Nutella to spread, a little more won’t hurt, but be careful not to overdo lest it ooze!
2-3 tablespoon, toasted, chopped hazelnuts ( Optional- I think for a neater swirl, these can be omitted, else chop them really fine, even pulse them in the food processor or mixie for a few seconds. Other wise you can sprinkle the nuts on top of the cookies, and press them in just before baking, which I would recommend) 

Method:

1. Put a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 175C/350F.
2. Mix the butter and sugar together till creamy with an electric beater/stand mixer
3. Mix in the egg yolk and the vanilla essence. The mixture should be light and well combined.
4. Stir in the flour with a spoon ( don't overmix!) and refrigerate the dough for 15 minutes so that it can firm up and facilitate easy rolling. (The dough will be really sticky at this point, and I put it into a large gallon size zip lock bag.)
5. Next, roll out the dough into a rectangle of ¼ inch thickness.( I cut the zip lock bag on two sides and rolled the dough while it was still inside the bag- this made it very easy to roll as the sticky dough didn't get stuck to my rolling pin.) 
6. Spread the Nutella making sure to leave one finger space on all four sides. Again, we don’t want the Nutella to ooze out!
7. Roll up the dough lenghtwise, so that you end up with a short stout log, not a tall long ( unless you want smaller, but more cookies like I ended up- but then the pinwheel effect won't be as pronounced) 
8. Refrigerate for another ten minutes before cutting the slices.
9. To make Nutella stuffed cookies, take about a tablespoon of the dough and pull it into two equal halves.
10. Now roll each piece into balls and flatten each in your palm like a chappati/pancake shape. 
11. Put a blob of Nutella in the center of one and cover with the other. Pinch the edges together so that the nutella doesn't leak out.
12. Roll the whole thing together into one bigger ball and place it on the baking sheet.
13. Lay the slices on a lined baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes till slightly golden at the edges. Baking time will vary depending on how thick you’ve cut them. Colour is a good indication- it should be golden brown..

The lovely Shaheen of Purple foodie suggests two ways to cut the log into slices:

1.With a knife (surprise!) and a better, neater way would be with

2.A firm thin wire.When you use a wire you will have a very clean looking pinwheel with no unwanted brown Nutella spots, and a crumbly looking texture.When you use a knife, you will see that the Nutella smears the rest of the cookie while the knife passes through the dough, albeit smooth textured

Since I didn't have any wire I used a tooth pick instead and it worked ok. Don't think it was the poor toothpick's fault that I didn't roll my log neatly enough! 

My notes:

Because they are so buttery ( and hence deeelicious!) the dough is super sticky.So anytime it gets difficult to roll, put it back in the fridge so that it hardens a little and things become less messy.

The trick of using a zip lock bag and rolling the dough in the bag works very well

I also rolled the log using the plastic sides of the zip lock bag.

These buttery cookies are best enjoyed warm- More reason to eat them straight out of the oven when the Nutella is still a little gooey and warm!