Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

At the end of last year I bough a beautiful book called Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood. She writes beautifully and the book is a collection of recipes and stories. The recipes are eclectically gathered together, so you will find cakes and desserts in amongst recipes for savoury dishes. If I was going to write a recipe book, I think I would adopt this style and have the chapters assembled by way of occasion.

I actually haven’t made a lot of the recipes in the book yet, but one of the recipes that caught my eye early on was that for Milk chocolate and hazelnut cookies. The occasion rose to make the cookies last week when I bought a cake of milk chocolate for a school fundraiser. If I didn’t use the chocolate in baking, I was going to be in danger of eating the whole cake myself (and even though I try and convince myself that I need the calories for breastfeeding I really don’t!), so I took the opportunity to make these cookies.

I love these kind of cookies – I think it is the fact that they don’t have any kind of raising agent in them – that seems to make them more dense and crumbly, not too crisp and yet not too soft. The chunks of milk chocolate went perfectly with the hazelnuts and the vanilla hit was noticeable. I would definitely make these again.

Milk chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies (from Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood)

80g hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
125g butter
100g sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 egg yolk
210g flour
140g milk chocolate, chopped

• Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla paste and egg yolk.
• Stir in the flour and then the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate.
• Roll the dough into a log, refrigerate for an hour, then slice into rounds (relatively thickly) and bake at 160c for 10-15 minutes