Macadamia Gianduja Chunk Cookies

These chunky cookies are melt-in-your-mouth shortbread packed full of creamy gianduja and crunchy macadamias.  This recipe originally calls for hazelnuts, which ties in with the gianduja, but I only had macadamias on hand when I made this and it was still glorious.

Recipe adapted from: Chewy Gooey Crispy Cruncy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich
Ingredients
225g butter/margarine
125g white sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt (if using unsalted butter/margarine)
310g flour
125g chopped gianduja (or milk chocolate if you don't have gianduja on hand, though I highly recommend getting some because it's so good)
3/4 cup macadamias or hazelnuts

Method
1. Chop your gianduja into largish chunks.  Roughly chop the macadamias and toast them in a frypan or in the oven on the grill setting, then set them aside to cool.

2. Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla and salt until blended.

3. Stir in the flour until moistened.

4. Stir the gianduja and nuts into the dough.  At this point, my dough was kind of bitsy and didn't really look like a normal biscuit dough; but have no fear!

5. Refrigerate the dough for a few hours or overnight if you can.

6. When you're ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 160C (325F).

7. Using your hands, take roughly tablespoons of dough and pat them together to form a ball.  Due to the sheer amount of nuts and gianduja, you may need to do a bit of squishing to make sure the cookies stick together!

8. Place the dough balls on baking paper or silicone mats, making sure they have a little space to spread (about 5cm).

9. Bake for about 20 minutes or until they are lightly golden on the top.

10. Cool the cookies and consume at your leisure.  If desired, sift some icing sugar on top for that extra touch of sweetness.

Molten Chocolate Babycakes, and the joy that is Gianduja

Gianduja is a truly delicious substance made of hazelnut (or another nut) paste and chocolate - you may know it as hazelnut praline.  It melts like chocolate and acts rather like chocolate in baking, too, as I discovered in my little forays in substituting it into recipes.  Its taste is reminiscent of Nutella and expensive chocolates, i.e. mouthwatering.

It can also be used for decoration, in different forms depending on how you cut it.  It can go into chunks or shavings, but if you're careful you can coax it into curls.

One of the things I used the gianduja for was Molten Chocolate Babycakes, a delightful and completely chocolatey recipe from James McNair via a Nigella Lawson cookbook.  The recipe uses chocolate but I substituted about half the chocolate for gianduja and it gave the babycakes a lovely hazelnut-chocolatey (Nutella-y, gianduja-y) taste.  The babycakes are equally as good with just chocolate, mind you.

Recipe Adapted From: How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

Molten Chocolate Babycakes

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter/margarine, plus extra for greasing

350g good quality dark chocolate

150g caster sugar

4 large eggs

1 pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g plain flour

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C/392 F.  If you're making the babycakes in advance (they can be refrigerated as batter, because it's best to eat them right after they've been baked) then don't heat the oven until closer to the serving time.

2. Grease six large cupcake/muffin moulds or about 12 smaller ones with butter.  Make sure there's adequate greasing because, if not, the babycakes will stick.

3. Melt the chocolate and set it aside to cool.

4. Cream the butter and sugar.

5. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and add a pinch of salt, then the vanilla.

6. Stir in the flour, then the cooled chocolate, blending it into a smooth batter.

7. Divide the batter between the moulds.  If you take too long to do this, the batter will begin to harden and then it just gets annoying, so keep that in mind!

8. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes (make sure you bake them for the whole 12 minutes if the babycakes have been in the fridge)

9. Once removed from the oven, upturn the moulds onto plates and serve with ice cream or cream (the babycakes are very rich!)

When cut open, the babycakes should be molten and gooey and warm on the inside.

Perfect!