Salted Nutella Cookies

My family recently discovered the wonderfulness that is Nutella. For years I thought it was a diet peanut butter, but oh...I was falsely led astray! Nutella is ANYTHING but diet peanut butter. It is a spread made from hazelnuts and cocoa. And it will make ya slap yer pappy! Serve it on a piece of toast, or make delicious cookies! Which is what we're going to do today.

Cast of Characters: 1 cup Nutella, 1 egg, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup flour. That's it. For real.

Let's get started! First, mix the sugar and flour together until the flour is incorporated into the sugar. Or until the sugar is incorporated into the flour. Or....well you get the idea.

Mix egg and Nutella into the dry ingredients. Now let me tell you, that spoon there was no help. This mixture is VERY thick, and somewhat hard to work with. I would suggest starting with small portions of the Nutella and mixing them in. I ended up having to use a fork, and my hands, to get this mixed well. But believe me, it's worth it.

It should be somewhat crumbly when it is mixed together.

Form the dough into balls. The original recipe called for 1" balls, but I do believe mine are a tad bigger than that. When I make these again, I will definitely go smaller.

To flatten the cookies, either smash gently with a fork, or use the bottom of a mason jar or small glass dish for a more uniform cookie. If you go the fork route, be sure to use your free hand to stabilize the cookie as you push it down with the fork, or the dough will just crumble away at the sides.

Now comes the special ingredient, that accidentally got left out of the cast of characters. Course sea salt. As you can tell, I had extra course sea salt made for a salt grinder. So, I simply ground some into my hand, and it worked out perfectly.

Please excuse my nasty red hand. It doesn't belong.

Simply sprinkle the tops of the cookies with salt. I left some without salt, just to see the difference in taste. I definitely preferred them with the salt. Gives them an extra bite.

Bake these puppies in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 8 minutes, and you are good to go! It will be tempting to just let them go 10 minutes, but I implore you to only let them bake for 8 minutes. Maybe even shorter if you have a super hot oven. They may seem a little under baked, but let them cook a few minutes on the sheet. If you bake them any longer, the leftover cookies will be as hard as a rock the next day. That is, if you even have leftovers.

It is imperative that you fill a glass with ice cold milk, and scarf these down before they cool off. They are that delicious. I could only eat about 1 1/2 because they are SO rich. But the salt really helps pull it off. It gives you that bite that you need with the sweetness from the Nutella.

Scrumptious! Go make these. And enjoy!

-Jenn (With 2 N's)