Chocolate chip hazelnut cookies and summer reads

Hello pretty people! Yes yes, another cookie recipe. I'm sorry, but seriously, these are WAY too good to miss. You're gonna want to eat them. All. With a glass of milk or without it. They taste like nutella, sort of. Maybe you'll eat them while reading a book?

I devour books in summer. I start by going through a book while I'm on my long plane flights on my way home. (Specially if annoying teenagers don't let me sleep). Then I just carry a book around everywhere I go. The beach, the park, the car (not if I'm driving that is). I read while I'm having breakfast, while I wait for my bread to rise, while my parents are taking naps. I just read read read.

This summer I'm going for the classics. Believe it or not, I have never read 'to kill a mockingbird' or 'the catcher in the rye', so I decided to give them a shot. Have you read them? did you like them?. I seem to be in the dark/mystery mood lately. My other two reads for vacation are 'Invisible' by Paul Auster and 'the beekeeper's apprentice by Laurie King. Too much information? Sorry, I love books!. Now you tell me, what are you reading this summer? Do you have any recommendations for me?

I think you should eat these cookies while you read. They are THAT good. My roommate claims they are the best cookies he's ever eaten. They have oats and chocolate chips and crunchy hazelnuts. They smell like heaven. You could add other nuts to them, but the hazelnuts and chocolate combination has a nutella effect to it that you can't beat. Plus they are made with whole wheat flour, which means they are healthy, right? right!

Hazelnut chocolate chip cookies

adapted from 101 cookbooks

Print this recipe

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips/chunks

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup old fashioned oats

3/4 cups hazelnuts chopped by hand

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 egg

1/2 cup brown sugar

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

In a bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside. In another bowl cream together butter and sugar. Mix in the egg. Add the dry mixture and mix until combined. Stir in oats, chocolate chips and hazelnuts and incorporate into the dough with a wooden spoon. Drop the dough into a baking sheet by tablespoonfuls and press it down to flatten (they don't expand much when baked). Bake for 7-10 minutes until the cookies are fragrant and have golden edges.

Nuts and fruits biscotti

Places aren't made of buildings. Places are made of people. Let me explain. As much as cities are a concoction of streets, houses and crosswalks, the spirit of a city is made out of the people that live in it. I'm sure you agree with that. 

Boston area is a complicated place to live in. Winters are hard and snowy, summers can be crazy hot or crazy rainy and you never know what the weather's gonna be like in 5 minutes. This weather makes people sort of cold. Disciplined, organized, efficient and hard working, but cold. I've been lucky. I found myself surrounded by people from very different places, that ended up in the same place (my ex lab) and tried to bond together and be almost family to each other.

I'm leaving this city in less than two months. And my two best buddies and ex-labmates are leaving too. We're all going in different directions and hoping for e-mails and phone calls to keep us close. Our other common friend, L, is staying here. And because we've spent many hours together and shared some of the best moments in these (for me) last two years, it is not easy for her to see us leaving.

I like to see her happy, so I made her these biscotti. They are full of all sorts of goodness. Nuts? you name them, they are here. Pine nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts. Dried fruit? cranberries and apricots. Brown sugar and honey. It can't get much better than this. 

I adapted the recipe, with lots of changes from here. You can definitely play around with the nuts or the fruits. I replaced cane sugar for brown sugar + honey and they are not super sweet but have a depth of flavor that only honey can give. Also, I omitted liquors in the recipe and changed them for soy milk. Make sure you add a couple tablespoons of liquid, whether it's water, milk or alcohol, otherwise the dough is to hard to work with when you add the nuts and fruits. 

Print this recipe

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon honey

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons soy milk

1/2 cup hazelnuts

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup dried apricots

1/4 cup walnuts

1/4 cup pine nuts

Preheat oven to 375 F

In a bowl whisk together flours, baking soda and baking powder. Set aside. In another bowl mix the melted butter, sugar and honey. Stir in the vanilla and add the eggs one at a time while mixing. Add the dry mixture about 1/2 cup at a time. Finish mixing it in with a spoon (dough will be hard). Add the soy milk, this makes the dough softer and easier to work with. Add the nuts and dried fruits and incorporate them into the dough  mixing with a wooden spoon. It will take a bit of work but it's totally worth it.  

Divide the dough in half and shape it into two logs about half inch thick. Bake them for about 25 minutes or until hard to the touch. Take them out of the oven (don't turn it off), let them cool a bit and cut them into 1/2 inch wide biscotti. Place the biscotti cut side down and bake them for another 15 to 20 minutes until crispy. I like to flip them half way through the baking time so they are equally toasted on both sides. 

Hazelnut chocolate swirl bread

Lately I've been thinking about food a lot. Well, that's not really surprising. But I've been having serious conversations with myself about it. Ugh, that sounds weird. Let's start again. Lately I've been having deep, elaborate thoughts about cooking, baking and food itself. About how what I put in my mouth affects my moods, my body and my health. That's more like it. 

I look back a couple years ago and realize I've changed a lot the way I eat. I've never been one for packaged stuff like Ding-dongs or Twinkies, in fact I find them really gross. Nor am I miss butter-y girl either. I don't cook with butter and I try to reduce amounts of it in baked goods. You could say I don't like greasy stuff, even if I really enjoy well made fries. But still, a year ago, you could find me devouring, quite often, all the baked goods that my roommate brought from the bakery she worked at. Indeed they were fine pastries, cakes and cookies, but the sugar levels were sort of scary.

I'm done with sugar comas. I enjoy dried fruits more than I enjoy candy (although I do eat gummy bears every so often), I like raw sugar much better than the refined one and I'm definitely not into buttercream frosting. I also use and abuse whole grains on a daily basis and try to stay away from anything pre-made or pre-packaged, even the bread. Call me a freak if you wish.

This bread is the result of those two years of changes. Of how much I enjoy a freshly baked loaf of home made bread, be it sweet or not. This bread has the perfect amount of sweetness, the creaminess of the chocolate and the crunch from the hazelnuts. The  hard crust prevents it from drying and keeps all the flavor inside. A great substitute for those of you who could die for a toast with nutella. The perfect sunday morning breakfast.

I baked this one along with a cinnamon swirl bread soon to come. I plan on baking many more breads in the future, I'm even toying with the idea of a 'one bread a week' sort of thing. I'm also moving towards more elaborate pastries, cookies and others. I feel like I need to use more with fruits in season in my baked goods, along with almonds, hazelnuts, sesame seeds, honey and other natural sources of flavor. Stay tuned folks, nothing bad can come out of this!

The recipe is a remake from the cinnamon swirl raisin bread from the Bread Baker's apprentice. I left the same basic dough but took out the cinnamon and added chopped hazelnuts and chocolate. I also changed instant yeast for active dry yeast. Since the recipe yields two loaves, I made another one braided and with cinnamon, no raisins. Coming soon!

This bread was sent to the Bread Baking Day event of this month, breads with nuts! You can find it here

Print this recipe

3 1/2 cups bread flour (16 oz)
4 teaspoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast
1 large egg beaten
2 tablespoons butter melted
1/2 cup buttermilk (you can substitute for whole milk)
3/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup hazelnuts, chopped
1 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Dissolve the yeast in the 3/4 cups of water and add a teaspoon of the sugar. Let it sit until the yeast 'wakes up' and doubles in volume. In the meantime, combine flour and sugar in a bowl and separately, melt the butter. Make a well in the center of the flour and add the yeast, mix until combined. Add the egg, buttermilk and butter and mix until the ingredients come together to form a ball. Place the ball in a floured surface and knead for about ten minutes. Place the dough in a greased bowl and let it rise overnight in the fridge or for about 2 hr at room temperature (proofing in the fridge gives depth of flavor).

Once doubled, split the dough in half. Roll each ball into a rectangle about half an inch thick. Spread the hazelnuts and chocolate and roll the dough like a swiss roll. Starting on the longest side of the rectangle. Tuck the ends of the dough underneath the rest and place it in a loaf pan. Let it rise for an hour. Brush the top with egg wash and sprinkle with more hazelnuts.

Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes rotating the pan half way through the baking time. The bread is done when it makes a hollow sound if thumped.