Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt

Chocolate chip cookies stuffed with Nutella and sprinkled with sea salt. Sounds awesome, right? They are! I have seen a few recipes for similar cookies around the internet, but if you know me, you know I don’t bake. So, this is a super cheater version that takes only minutes from beginning to end and doesn’t require much skill. Not so much a “recipe”, more of a “How To”.

I love to cook, but baking is another beast entirely. I use the oven when necessary and I fake the whole baking thing with super, simple sweets and recipes (if you can call it that) such as this. If I scroll down an ingredients list and see baking soda or baking powder…. I’m out. That’s where I draw the line. Even flour is iffy. So don’t worry – these cookies don’t involve any of that precise nonsense.

Here’s what you need:

-Refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough (yep! Talk about cheating. I used this brand because of it’s price at my wholesale warehouse)

-Nutella

-Coarse Sea Salt

(Oh… and parchment paper 😉 )

I know, long list. Tough to remember, better get a pen and paper and go back over it.

NOTE: The cookies I am making are large cookies. You can adjust measurements to make them smaller if you would like. I prefer them big because I feel better about myself if I can say, “I only ate one”.

The trick to making these, is to freeze dollops of Nutella for a few minutes beforehand. I’ve had many trial and error attempts making these cookies and I have found that freezing the Nutella, as well as handling the refrigerated dough as little as possible, makes all the difference.

I use a metal baking sheet covered in parchment paper and plop down little globs of Nutella every inch or so until I have enough for one dollop per each cookie I’m making. Here I am using a teaspoon as measurement, but as you can see, it is a heaping teaspoon. Place the sheet of Nutella flat in the freezer for about 10 mins or until Nutella is hardened enough to handle.

Set your oven to 350* and while it preheats, prep the bottom of your cookie. I take a heaping spoonfuls of refrigerated cookie dough and place on my baking sheet every couple of inches, touching the dough as little as possible with my hands. Hands will warm up the dough and make for a flattened cookie.

I use the back of the spoon to press down a bit in the middle of the dough to make a little crater to house the Nutella.

Place the hardened Nutella dollops in the center of each cookie. (these are photos taken with my phone… don’t judge me)

Take another heaping spoonful of cookie dough, about the same size as the first, and place on top of the Nutella dollop. Use your hands make the top and bottom of the dough touch and enclose the Nutella so it is not showing. Sort of forming a ball around the Nutella. 😉 They will look something like this:

Place the baking sheet in your preheated oven. For my large cookies, I bake for about 13-14mins.

Immediately sprinkle sea salt on the cookies when removed from the oven while they are still hot. The cookies make look a little wet or under-cooked in the center.

I made the mistake of putting previous batches back in the oven thinking they need more time. Not the case. This only led to a crunchy overcooked cookie. I have found that they appear to be undercooked in the center because of the oils in the Nutella. Once they cool completely, they are perfect!