Chocolate Espresso Toasted Hazelnut Cookies

December 20, 2015 — last updated January 20, 2016 by Jennie 23 comments »

These Chocolate Espresso Toasted Hazelnut Cookies are rich in butter, soft, yet crunchy, and abundant in chocolate and hazelnuts that have been toasted to perfection.

I’ve recently taken up the sport of stalking the mall Santaland. I don’t have children, so that’s probably why I find it hilarious to watch the reactions of the kiddos as they see Santa for the first time. Some kids are in complete awe, others look horrified as they meet the man in the bright red suit. Some kids keep their cool at a distance, but once it’s their turn to sit on Santa’s lap, their composure quickly wavers. Their calm admiration makes an acute left turn somewhere along the road and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

I get it. Santa’s scary! Before their meet and greet with Santa, parents have been practicing stranger danger and then, all of sudden, it’s perfectly fine to go up to a complete stranger and (gasp!) sit on his lap. In any other situation that would be wrong on so many levels. If you found your kid sitting on a stranger’s lap any other time of the year, it would trigger an animalistic rage so fierce a parent could lift up a car in order to save their child from the bad, bad stranger.

Santa is the one exception. Parents wait in line for hours just so they can place their precious bundle of joy in Santa’s arms in hopes they’ll create a memory that will last forever. A memory they can pull out years down the road with the intention of embarrassing their child in front of their new partner in crime, “Wasn’t little Sally just adorable in her sequin-dipped dress and glitter-soaked shoes? She looks like a little Christmas ornament in Santa’s lap.” Or, “Little Donny was a stubborn little brat that day. He kept running away from Santa. He just cried and cried.”

Well, of course little Donny cried! I’d cry too if you were forcing me onto the lap of a fat stranger wearing a bright red suit.

I love watching the parents as they try to keep their children entertained in the long line that snakes around the entire mall, combing their child’s hair and frantically cleaning their little faces in order to get the chocolate they used to bribe them to stay quiet and tame as they weaved through the line.

Is it worth it? From what I can tell, you wait all that time and when you do finally reach Santa, poor Johnny is not having it, like at all. What you end up with is a picture of your kid screaming his/her head off. Some memory.

Kids, I feel for you. I really, really do! To apologize for your parents’ attempt at creating precious memories, I’ve made you cookies. You’ve earned it! And these are good–really good! Go ahead, take two.

I’ve made three batches of these Chocolate Espresso Toasted Hazelnut Cookies in one week. My intention was to gift the cookies, but I just keep eating them instead. They’re irresistible in every way. Double the chocolate, espresso-infused chocolate chips, and toasty Diamond Chopped Hazelnuts. In my opinion, the hazelnut is under-appreciated. They’re good all on their own, but magical things happen when you take the time to toast them, which is exactly what I did for this recipe. Trust me, it’s worth the extra 5 minutes worth of effort.

I used a combination of instant espresso powder, espresso chocolate chips, and coffee extract to give these cookies a boost of coffee flavor. The combination is delicious.

These cookies are ultra chocolate-y with a chewy, gooey center and a toasty crunch from the hazelnuts.

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