Ready, Steady Cookies

I love hazelnut and chocolate so when my work colleague presented me with a 'Ready, Steady Cook' challenge to make  something from a left packet of toasted hazelnuts cookies immediately sprang to mind.

The base of the recipe was Will Torrent's Macadamia and caramelised white chocolate cookies from Chocolate at Home, but I replaced the macadamia nuts with the hazlenuts and white chocolate with 70% dark.  The result were some really nice, not over sweet cookies (if a little crunchier than I would have liked).

Ingredients:

175 g Unsalted Butter
175 g Soft Light Brown Sugar
75 g Caster Sugar
2 Eggs Beaten
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
250 g Plain Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
100 g Toasted Hazelnuts
150 g Dark Chocolate Chips

Method:

Melt the butter in a small pan and heat for 5-10 minutes until it is golden brown and smells nutty.  Let the butter cool to room temperature.
Add the sugars to the butter and beat until pale and light.  Add the egg and the vanilla extract. 

Sift together the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda and mix in the hazelnuts and chocolate chips.  Mix with the butter and sugar into a soft dough.  Spoon the mix onto a sheet of clingfilm and roll into a sausage with a diameter of about 7cm.  Chill the dough for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180 ^oC.  Slice the dough into discs about 1 cm wide and place on baking sheets lined with greaseproof paper leaving plenty of space between them so they can spread.  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown but the centre is still soft.  Leave to firm up on the baking tray for a few minutes before cooling on a wire rack.