I’ve been wanting to experiment with a more nut flours. As I’ve restarted this blog, and have gotten into a good groove, I’m trying to avoid us packing on extra pounds from all my cooking/baking. I have to find alternative ways to cut sugar and/or carbs from the recipe to make them healthier, but still delicious. There have been a lot of different options in stores for flours lately ranging from coconut flour to coffee meal to chestnut flour. When working with nut flour, remember that it’s low carb and gluten free so many of your baked goods will be slightly softer and won’t bind as much. Some ways to combat this is to add more rising agent to counteract the weight of the nut flour. Another is to substitute only a portion of the all purpose flour with nut flour.
I’m a total sucker for hazelnuts. Anything that is hazelnut or hazelnut flavored and I’m all in. So it’s not surprising that I bought a bag of hazelnut flour to play around with. I decided I wanted my cookie to be 100% hazelnut flour. Hazelnuts have such a rich nutty flavor that is simply so amazing that I felt would be extremely decadent with some dark chocolate and espresso. Because there is no gluten in these cookies, the texture is super soft and breaks apart easily. Chris really loved the sea salt flakes on these cookies and actually ate most of them when I wasn’t looking.
Hazelnut and Espresso Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups hazelnut flour (I used Bob's Red Mill)
- 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons espresso powder
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
- Sprinkle of sea salt flakes
Directions
- Step 1 In a medium bowl, whisk together hazelnut flour, salt, espresso powder, and baking soda and set aside.
- Step 2 In a stand mixer (or large mixing bowl and handheld mixer), cream the butter and sugar for about 5 minutes until the light in color and fluffy in texture.
- Step 3 Add egg and vanilla extract and mix for another minute.
- Step 4 Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until thoroughly incorporated.
- Step 5 Wrap the dough in saran wrap and place in fridge for about an hour.
- Step 6 Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or use a silpat).
- Step 7 Using a 1.5″ ice cream scoop, scoop out dough onto the baking sheet leaving around 2 inches of space in between the cookies.
- Step 8 Flatten the dough disks slightly and bake for 10 minutes.
- Step 9 Remove the baking sheet from the oven and allow cookies to cool on the sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
- Step 10 Melt chocolate and dip cookies into the chocolate or drizzle the chocolate on top of the cookies.
- Step 11 Sprinkle a healthy dose of sea salt flakes.
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