These Lilliputian Italian hazelnut-chocolate sandwich cookies are utterly charming—but only if they're perfect. Our approach makes it easy to get them just right.These tiny Italian hazelnut-chocolate sandwich cookies are typically made from a very rich, fragile dough that easily softens and crumbles when you roll it. Reducing the amount of butter and nuts in the dough made it firmer but still plenty rich and tender. Leaving bits of skin on the nuts also helped firm up the dough and added complex flavor and attractive color. Precisely portioning the dough so that each cookie bakes up identically usually requires scooping and weighing dozens of individual pieces, but we found that it was much faster and easier to press the dough into a parchment paper–lined square baking pan, briefly freeze it to firm it up, and cut a “portion grid” into the resulting dough block. Melting dark chocolate in the microwave and letting it cool and thicken slightly before spooning it onto the inverted cookies ensured that it didn't drip off the sides. Gently pressing the second cookie on top spread the filling just to the edges. Letting the cookies rest for 15 minutes before serving allowed the chocolate to set.
Notes
- Toast the hazelnuts on a rimmed baking sheet in a 325-degree oven until fragrant, 13 to 15 minutes, shaking the sheet halfway through toasting. To skin them, gather the warm hazelnuts in a dish towel and rub to remove some of the skins.
- A square-cornered metal baking pan works best for shaping the dough. If using a baking dish with rounded corners, be sure to square the corners of the dough before portioning.
- We prefer Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Premium Baking Bar for this recipe.
- Another advantage that I’ve found of using metric measurements in this (or any other) recipe is that it is much easier to scale. I wanted a recipe that would easily produce 3 dozen finished cookies (72 cookie halves). To achieve this, I place the empty food processor work bowl (with the blade) onto the scale, “zero” the scale, add 103g of hazelnuts, “zero” the scale, add 103g of flour, “zero” the scale, add 72g of sugar plus the original 1/8 tsp of salt. Process according to the recipe, add 87g of cubed unsalted butter, process, portion, bake, cool and fill. Voilà! Three dozen cookies!
- Use a portion scoop and portion into 72 5-gram balls.
Ingredients
- ¾ cup hazelnuts - toasted and partially skinned, 3 ounces/85 grams
- ⅔ cup all-purpose flour - 3½ ounces/99 grams
- ⅓ cup sugar - 2⅓ ounces/66 grams
- ⅛ teaspoon table salt
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter - cut into ½-inch pieces and chilled
- 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate - chopped, 57 grams
Instructions
- Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 325 degrees.
- Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Line the bottom of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment.
Make the dough:
- Process the hazelnuts, flour, sugar, and salt in food processor until the hazelnuts are very finely ground, 20 to 25 seconds.
- Add the butter and pulse until the dough just comes together, 20 to 25 pulses.
Prepare the dough:
- Transfer the dough to the counter.
- Knead briefly to form a smooth ball.
- Place the dough in the prepared pan, and press into an even layer that covers the bottom of the pan.
- Freeze for 10 minutes.
Form the cookies:
- Run a knife or bench scraper between the dough and the edge of the pan to loosen.
- Turn out the dough onto the counter and discard the parchment.
- Cut the dough into 64 squares (8 rows by 8 rows).
- Roll the dough squares into balls and evenly space 32 dough balls on each prepared sheet.
Bake the cookies:
- Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until the cookies look dry and are fragrant (cookies will settle but not spread), about 20 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through baking.
- Transfer the sheet to a wire rack and let the cookies cool completely, about 30 minutes.
Melt the chocolate:
- Microwave the chocolate in a small bowl at 50 percent power, stirring every 20 seconds, until melted, 1 to 2 minutes.
- Let the chocolate cool at room temperature until it is slightly thickened and registers 80 degrees, about 10 minutes.
- Invert half of the cookies on each sheet.
Assemble:
- Using a ¼-teaspoon measure, spoon the chocolate onto the flat surfaces of all of the inverted cookies.
- Top with the remaining cookies, pressing lightly to adhere.
- Let the chocolate set for at least 15 minutes before serving. (Cookies can be stored in airtight container at room temperature for up to 10 days.)