The Christmas is slowly approaching and I intensively started to think of all the stress and panic shortly before 24th December. And because this year I want to be prepared, I started to collect my favourite recipes for Christmas baking. Recipes for these hazelnut cookies come in many versions, also in Italian. But I mostly liked the traditional version of this recipe with butter which I found in my favourite cook magazine Billa - Frisch Gekocht. So I decided to give it a try and I must tell you, better hazelnut cookies don't exist. The procedure is very easy to follow and the result is just amazing! Let's prepare them!
BISCOTTI ALLE NOCCIOLE OR HAZELNUT COOKIES (WITH NOUGAT SPREAD)
Prep time: 20 min
Baking time: 20+20 min
Chilling time: 1hr
Cookies: about 40
Ingredients:
1 Vanilla pod
190g soft butter (they use peanut oil in Italian version instead)
100g granulated sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 egg
250g wheat flour
120g ground hazelnuts
100g nougat cream (or you can also use any other cream you would use for cookies or cake)
40 pcs hazelnuts kernels
Storage:
Keep the biscuits in a cookie tin in a fridge for a week at the most.
Procedure:
- Slice the vanilla pod, scrape out the pith. Mix the vanilla pulp, butter, sugar, salt and egg until creamy with a hand mixer.
- Mix flour with ground hazelnuts and stir quickly under the butter mixture. Halve the dough, form each into a ball, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 180C degrees. Take the first half of the dough out of the fridge and make hazelnut-sized balls. Place on a baking tray covered with baking paper and slightly press each ball.
- Bake in the oven for 13-15 minutes until golden brown.
- In the meantime, form small balls from the second piece of dough and place it on a second baking sheet lined with baking paper. Press flat and place a hazelnut kernel in the center of each ball. Bake in the oven for 13-15 minutes until golden brown. Allow biscuits to cool down.
- In the meantime fill nougat cream in a pastry bag and refrigerate for 1 hour in the refrigerator ( I skipped this step and went directly onto biscuits filling).
- Put a little amount of nougat cream on a biscuit without hazelnut and add a second biscuit with hazelnut kernel.
Enjoy!
For the original recipe which was posted on www.frischgekocht.billa.at, please click here.
