peanut butter nutella swirl

The Boy and his siblings threw a surprise 60th birthday party for their mother and requested that I contribute homemade cookies for the party. Of course, I obliged. I asked how many people were expected and his oldest brother said 50 people. I went "holy sh*t, that's a lot of cookies I'll have to make!" I prepared four types of cookie dough, drove to the party super early and baked all morning before the birthday girl arrived. I estimated that each batch yielded three dozen cookies, so that would be about twelve dozen cookies total. Yes, that's a lot of cookies. Yes, there were a lot left over, but none left for me. The cookies were such a hit that every there took a goodie bag with them when they left. By the time I finished helping with cleaning up after the party, there were no more cookies for me to take home. =(

ANYWAYS...I made the usual chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles because those were the mom's favorites. I decided to debut the Andes mint chocolate cookies to this crowd and they were a hit. I also did a newbie - the peanut butter nutella swirl - almost by accident because I had initially intended to make these peanut butter nutella cookies but realized I didn't have any cake flour when it came time to making cookie dough. So I had to improvise and this is what I came up with for the peanut butter nutella swirl cookies.

Ingredients:


1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp
3/4 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy depending on your mood)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup Nutella (or more)

Baking Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

1. Combine butter, peanut butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla. Blend together very well.

2. Add flour, baking soda and salt with mixer. Add Nutella by slightly melting it in the microwave and drizzling it over the dough, running a butter knife to slightly mix the nutella into the peanut butter cookie dough. Or, if you don't want to melt the nutella in the microwave, just scoop out the nutella with a butter knife and mix it into the dough (I probably did two scoops of nutella with the butter knife, which was probably a little more than 1/4 cup). You don't want to mix too much because you want to see the "swirls" of nutella in the cookie dough.

3. Chill dough overnight or at least 15 minutes in the refrigerator.  Roll into balls or scoop out with handy dandy cookie scooper.  Place on greased cookie sheet.

4.  Bake in oven for about 7 to 10 minutes, until edges are very lightly browned. Don't overbake.

My cookie scooper (2 tbsp?) yielded exactly 3 dozen cookies. You can't see the nutella swirls in the picture above because of the bad lighting, but you can definitely taste it!