Thursday, August 28, 2014

Chocolate Dipped Hazelnut Cookies - A Decadent Little Cookie Loaded w/ Hazelnuts & Drenched in Dark Chocolate


As promised, today I'm sharing my new dessert recipe with you. Honeyville has graciously invited me back to do a guest post for them...and I enthusiastically said YES! I love their blanched almond flour and have been using it for over 2 years now. Now, I'm happy to share that there is a new love in my life...their hazelnut flour! I love hazelnuts and am looking forward to using them more in my fall baking this year. When I roasted a batch recently, as part of this recipe, I roasted some extra hazelnuts to use in some other things, too. I just used them a couple of nights ago when I made chicken salad...they were awesome in chicken salad.

As many of you that follow me know, most of the recipes I post are "regular meal" recipes. Part of the reason for that is after going low carb over 2 years ago (wheat and grain free with no added sugar), my sweet tooth became seriously blunted. However, it is definitely not dead! LOL The nice thing about it being blunted is that it doesn't take an endless stream of "treats" to satisfy it any more and when I do enjoy sweets and treats, they don't need to be sickening sweet like before. I can eat a cookie or two (okay, sometimes 3...LOL) and just naturally stop. Not because I'm trying to force myself not to eat the entire batch, but because I genuinely have had enough.

The dessert recipe I'm sharing today is for my Chocolate Dipped Hazelnut Cookies. These little cookies are packed full of hazelnuts. I used Honeyville's Hazelnut Flour as the base for the cookies and then added roasted hazelnuts to the cookie batter. After baking and cooling them, I dunked those little devils into glossy smooth melted dark chocolate and then hit them with another "bam" of chopped roasted hazelnuts. Those little hazelnut pieces clung to the melted chocolate like glue. I love these cookies. You definitely know you are eating hazelnut cookies. So, if you are a hazelnut "nut" like I am, you will definitely enjoy these delicious cookies. They aren't just good, they look fancy, too, and with only minimal effort to make them look that way. I used granular Swerve as the sweetener for my cookie dough to help keep the carb and sugar count low. The only sugar you will find in these is from the type of dark chocolate you use to dip them in. I try and stick to somewhere between 70% and 90% cacao chocolate (most of the time I eat 88% dark chocolate). I used 70% chocolate for these. You can also find and use no sugar added chocolate bars (sweetened with stevia or erythritol) if you choose to.

These cookies turned out beautiful. I love looking at beautiful, elaborate desserts just like anyone else...you know the kind that are on magazine covers or the ones that look like they should be? Yeah...I like looking at them...I just don't care much for making them. If I'm going to dedicate hours of my life to a cause, it isn't going to be making a pretty dessert that takes hours of pampering and decorating. Not when I can make a delicious dessert that looks pretty and tastes good and not have it shave hours off of my life to make it look that way. If it looks like a magazine cover...that's where it will most likely stay at my house. It will never make it to my kitchen...and not because I "can't" do it, but because I "choose" not to. Trust me, I've been foolish enough to make PLENTY of those time wasting elaborate desserts in my lifetime. So, rather than ramble on and on about my philosophy on life....I'm going to point you to the recipe, which is why you came here in the first place! The recipe can be found here: Chocolate Dipped Hazelnut Cookies.

P.S. -- Because I know you are going to ask, and even if you don't ask you will certainly wonder...each cookie has slightly less than 1 net carb before dipping in chocolate. You will need to calculate and add on the carbs based on the type of chocolate you use. Just divide your chocolate carbs by the number of cookies you make (I made 35 with this recipe) and add on the "1 net carb" per cookie...and BOOM...you've got your total carb count. If you melt and use a non-sugar chocolate bar (one sweetened with either erythritol or stevia), you can reduce the "per cookie carb" even further. I hope you like this low carb treat as much as I do. Enjoy!



Roasted to perfection (skins rubbed off in a dishtowel after roasting)
Honeyville's Hazelnut Flour
The dough is mixed and ready to be chilled
Baked, cooled and ready to be dipped into beautiful melted dark chocolate
Who needs Pepperidge Farm anyway?  ;-)
Stacked and ready to be devoured!
BOOM!
       

4 comments:

Judy in MI said...

Look delicious! Trying these very, very soon!

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

These look fabulous and sound even *more* fabulous! If they were to end up on a magazine cover, I don't think they would be out of place at all! What a lovely addition these will make to Christmas "goodie" bags! The two different shapes plus the chocolate/nut dip look very elegant, indeed. And who could resist chocolate *and* hazelnut together!

BTW, did I ever tell you that "Chocolate" is my middle name and "Hazelnut" is my other middle name? But you might have already guessed that! :-)

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Thanks Judy -- I hope you enjoy them! :-)

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

Thanks. LOL. While I don't think these would make a magazine cover...they are pretty considering you just roll them with your hands and bake. Decorating them is a pleasure too...I mean who can resist dunking them in chocolate?

LOL...too funny that you ended up with TWO middle names! Hope you enjoy them...and yes, they would be pretty in Christmas goodie bags! :-)