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These delectable Nutella Cookies are subtly chocolaty with a hint of hazelnut. Perfectly soft and chewy, with bittersweet chocolate scattered throughout.
Mouthwatering and simple nutella cookies are a dynamite reason to open (or finish) your cupboard’s coveted jar of nutella! In this recipe, the bittersweet chips give a welcome burst of rich chocolate that beautifully complement the smooth and creamy Nutella dough. I tested and retested the ratio of ingredients, so that everything is perfect in this easy to make cookie!
If you prefer extra-chocolate cookies, my Quadruple Chocolate Pudding Cookies, Double Chocolate Chip Cookies or Double Chocolate Biscotti will satisfy even the most intense chocolate craving!
Why this is the best nutella cookies recipe:
- Irresistible chewy texture. These cookies are chewy, thick and tender with the perfect amount of nutella for taste and texture, and the ideal process for a slightly crunchy exterior.
- Subtle and nuanced flavor. Nutella gives your cookies added richness, softness, and a small hint of hazelnut that sets them apart from other chocolate chip cookies in the most delightful way.
- Step-by-step practical guidance from a pro pastry chef. I gradually break down exactly how to make the softest, chewiest, and most balanced nutella cookie in the easiest way possible. I even included a how-to video in the recipe card!
Professional tips for success:
- Brown sugar is essential. You can use light or dark brown sugar, whichever you have on hand, but don’t substitute 100% granulated white sugar. The cookies will not be as thick and they will spread more.
- Incorporate your flour slowly. For the thickest, chewiest nutella cookies, gradually add your dry ingredients so that you do not overwhelm your mixture. I wait until my flour is barely just incorporated before adding a little more. This ensures I never end up with tough cookies!
- Chill your cookie dough. I recommend refrigerating your cookie dough for between 2 hours to overnight. This allows extra meld time for the flavors and gets you the ideal chewy cookie texture.
What is nutella?
Nutella is a brand of cocoa and hazelnut paste that originated from Italy. There are many different brands all with their own unique taste. The best one is the one you enjoy the most. You can find Nutella and other similar cocoa hazelnut spreads in grocery or specialty stores.
Ingredients
- Butter: I use unsalted butter for baking, because you want to control the amount of salt you are adding. Every brand is different and it makes adjusting the recipe a challenge.
- Nutella: I am partial to the flavor of Nutella but you can use the chocolate hazelnut spread of your choice. Since you already have the nutella out, you only need 3 ingredients more to make my wildly popular and super easy Nutella Truffles!
- Light Brown Sugar: Using light brown sugar adds sweetness along with a little moisture. This will keep the cookies softer and also offer a light molasses flavor.
- Granulated Sugar: Granulated sugar is here for sweetness. However, if you add too much in proportion to the nutella, the cookies will spread rather than stay tall and chewy.
- Whole Egg: The egg is here to add fat, moisture and leavening. The fat from the yolk adds richness and helps keep the cookies chewy. Beating in the eggs just enough will add a little or a lot of leavening depending on the desired texture.
- Cornstarch: Adding cornstarch to nutella cookies helps make them chewy and thick. If you don’t have cornstarch you can omit it, or you can use a cornstarch substitute like tapioca starch instead.
- Baking Soda: Baking soda reacts with an acid, the molasses in the brown sugar in this instance, to leaven the cookies. It reacts more powerfully than baking powder and will create a more dramatic rise, but will not continue to react in the heat of the oven or without the presence of an acid.
- Chocolate Chips: I use Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips for contrasting flavors in my nutella chocolate chip cookies.
- All Purpose Flour
- Kosher Salt
- Vanilla Extract
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
Variations
- Ice cream sandwiches: These nutella cookies are delicious with a scoop of chocolate ice cream or vanilla bean ice cream between them.
- Many mix-in possibilities. You can definitely add mix-ins to nutella cookies, making them very versatile! Experiment with adding oats, chopped toasted hazelnuts (for extra hazelnut flavor), or candied citrus peel. You could even use chopped chocolate as an alternative to chocolate chips, like I do in my Salted Chocolate Cherry Pistachio Pecan Bark. Be sure to let me know in the recipe comments which mix-ins are your favorites, so I can give them a try!
- Nutella stuffed cookies. Flatten each cookie dough ball into a disk. Wrap this disk around a frozen scoop of peanut butter, caramel candy or more nutella.
- Salty sweet finish. Sprinkle the top with fleur de sel or sea salt for an elevated salty sweet finish!
How to Make Nutella Cookies:
Further details and measurements can be found in the recipe card below!
Make the cookie dough:
Step 1: Whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
Step 2: Cream the butter, nutella, and sugars on medium-high speed until combined. Then, add the egg, and vanilla and mix until light and fluffy. I use the paddle attachment on my stand mixer for this, and it takes about 4 minutes total. Scrape down the bowl with a spatula once during this time.
You want to be sure the butter is cold, but soft and pliable. That way it will incorporate smoothly, and cream nicely with the sugar but not take on too much air. This will help your nutella cookies stay chewy rather than cakey.
Step 3: Reduce your stand mixer’s speed to low and add the flour mixture in small additions slowly. You don’t want flour to get everywhere! It usually takes me 5-7 additions, and I only mix each until just incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl several times. Add chocolate chips, and briefly mix so that they are evenly distributed.
Step 4: Scoop the dough using a 1” cookie scoop.
Optional, chill your cookie dough: This step is optional, though I do find that the flavors enhance with chilling. Roll the dough into balls 1 inch in diameter and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet, plate or tray. Cover well with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or up to 3 days.
Bake:
Step 5: Preheat the oven to 350℉.
Step 6: Bake the preheated oven on a parchment-paper lined sheet with the dough balls 2” apart. I usually bake them for 9-11 minutes, or until the edges are set and the tops have just started to brown.
Don’t over bake or they will be crispy and the bottoms will burn…I know…I ruined some in the name experimentation. Check and rotate your cookies after about 6 minutes!
Step 7: Let your nutella cookies cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, and move to a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!
Chef Lindsey’s Recipe Tip
I like to scoop my dough using a 1” cookie scoop prior to chilling so that the dough balls are ready-to-bake! There is nothing more frustrating than portioning chilled dough.
Frequently Asked Questions
They will keep up to 10 days in an airtight container at room temperature or several months frozen. If opting to freeze, I’d recommend that you freeze the cookie dough balls. Bake the dough straight from frozen at 350°F for 12-14 minutes.
Chilling is only truly ‘required’ when butter in the dough was melted, which it was not in this case. However, chilling nutella cookies dough before baking will create thicker, chewier cookies and also give more time for the flavors to meld. I find it best to scoop the cookie dough and chill in balls, because it is easier to manipulate before it solidifies.
These cookies ship wonderfully. Package in a decorative tin or just place in a zip-top bag in a mailer box. They keep for 10 days and they stay chewy for almost as long. The larger the cookie, the longer they stay chewy!
If you tried this recipe and loved it please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it goes in the comments below. I love hearing from you; your comments make my day!
Nutella Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter softened
- ⅓ cup Nutella stir before scooping, heaping
- ½ cup light brown sugar packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips I use Ghirardelli, in case you’re new around here
Instructions
Make the cookie dough:
- Whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
- Cream the butter, nutella, and sugars on medium-high speed until combined. Then, add the egg, and vanilla and mix until light and fluffy. I use the paddle attachment on my stand mixer for this, and it takes about 4 minutes total. Scrape down the bowl with a spatula once during this time.
- Reduce your stand mixer’s speed to low and add the flour mixture in small additions slowly. You don’t want flour to get everywhere! It usually takes me 5-7 additions, and I only mix each until just incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl several times. Add chocolate chips, and briefly mix so that they are evenly distributed.
- Scoop the dough using a 1” cookie scoop. Optional, chill your cookie dough: This step is optional, though I do find that the flavors enhance with chilling. Roll the dough into balls 1 inch in diameter and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet, plate or tray. Cover well with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or up to 3 days.
Bake:
- Preheat the oven to 350℉.
- Bake the preheated oven on a parchment-paper lined sheet with the dough balls 2” apart. I usually bake them for 9-11 minutes, or until the edges are set and the tops have just started to brown. Check and rotate your cookies after about 6 minutes!
- Let cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, and move to a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Before You Go!
I hope you enjoyed this professional chef tested nutella cookies recipe. Check out our other delicious cookie recipes, or keep your hazelnut trend going with some Flourless Chocolate Torte!
Hi!
I am a nutcase (ha!) when it comes to those cookies and have been making them regularly since i first saw this reciper a month ago.They are perfection and the answer to most of daily hassles and world conflicts but in my case, they inevitably always come out flat. This isnt a deal breaker in itself and there are bigger problems in life but I swung by your page today to see if i had missed some crucial instruction the first time around. It doesnt look like it so i have to ask: how do you get your cookies to have this perfect mounted shape with the thick middle??
I bake mine straight out of the fridge (i read your answer to a comment about that) and even as they spread out and puff up in the oven, they do so “flatly”. And then of course they flatten completely even more while cooling and turn out to be the opposite of yours i.e thin middle, thick sides. I tried different, longer, baking times but to no avail… I havent gotten so far as to experience with different temperatures but I wouldnt know to turn the heat up or down to get a better result. I will keep making them anyway but would love your insight on this extremely important matter! 🙂
Thanks!
LOL. I agree that baking big puffy cookies is an extremely important matter! Without baking with you it is hard to give you a definitely answer but I can think of a few things. 1) What is the protein content of your flour? Even AP flour varies in it’s protein content by 100%, which is kinda crazy. I use Bob’s Red Mill most frequently and it has 4g of protein in 1/4 c. Gluten (the protein in flour) creates structure and will help keep them from spreading like crazy. 2) Don’t skip the cornstarch! 3) I made the dough rounds and chilled them overnight so they were very, very cold. 4) Sometimes I get lazy and make my dough rounds more like 1.5 inches in diameter. Bigger rounds that you roll into a tall cylinder instead of a ball will give you a fatter cookie, so you could try rolling them more like a small can and less like a round ball. I also don’t flatten the rounds before I bake them, which is why the tops are so domed on mine.
As for temperature, try 325 F. If you bake them hotter, especially straight from the fridge, the outside will cook and brown faster than the inside can cook, so you will get a crispy outside and a raw inside. These crispy raw cookies probably won’t spread as much but they won’t be cooked either! Your oven could also run hot. Invest in an inexpensive oven thermometer so that you know exactly what temperature your cookies are baking at.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and it is perfect timing! To help fight off procrastination as avoidance of actual work I made a batch of the dough earlier today. Does the trick too. 🙂
The flour i use has about the same amount of protein as yours (and i put in heaping amounts this time), i definitely use the cornstarch since i got it especially to make this recipe in the first place and im undefeated at anticipating the craving and preparing the dough in advanc so it does spend the night and most of a day in the fridge. However because my baking dish is too big, i have to refrigerate the whole bunch of dough in a bowl and do the rolling thing just before sticking them into the oven. So ill give the cylinder shape a try and turn the heat down slightly and report back to you on the results!
Cookies are my favorite method of procrastination too! My baking dish doesn’t fit in my fridge either so I make the balls/cylanders and line them up in square metal cake pans (round would work too), cover with plastic wrap and stack them in the fridge! Easy peasy. If you are short on time or you are impatient, like me, you can put them in the freezer for several hours instead of the fridge overnight. I look forward to hearing your results! [On a side note, this troubleshooting is interesting because I am having the opposite problem with a triple chocolate chip cookie recipe that Im developing, and it’s driving me crazy! Going to make another batch tomorrow!)
Practice makes perfect…or so they say! In my case, it might very well earn me perfectly clogged arteries and elastic waistband jeans but on the plus side i wont be needing scented candles in my house for a very long time. The good news is, i believe i am almost done with the trial part of the program!
Verdict: the cylinder shape and lower temperature definitely helped. The cookies were a lot thicker. Unfortunately, it wasnt enough and they still flattened a lot more than yours (even though i let them bake longer despite the fact that i like my cookies very underdone)
So for the next time: i will try rolling the dough balls before refrigerating it as it seems it is the only thing i did differently. I also think i need a lighter hand when mixing the ingredients together. I tend to get zealous over clumps and, despite knowing better, overbeat the whole thing (that might be a solution for that triple chocolate chip cookie recipe though…). I end up with a nice and smooth dough that gets runny when it bakes. Lastly, i will use a bit more flour and keep the lower temperature.
Such a simple recipe with so few ingredients and it feels like im trying to crack the Rosetta stone! 🙂 Thanks for the support through it all!
Hooray for little successes! I am a habitual underbaker much to my husband’s disgust! The cookies pictures were most certainly under baked because that is how I like them. I bake a second batch for him. 🙂
I think rolling them into balls pre baking will absolutely help. So would freezing them preshaped.
As for my triple chocolate cookies, I need to take out the cornstarch! I think I’m also going to increase the butter by a little. Sugar helps cookies spread too, so maybe I’ll change that. Ugh so many options! I am less concerned about over mixing cookies than cakes, for example, because there is usually so much sugar and fat that it inhibits too much gluten formation anyways. I do mix just to combine after adding the dry ingredients. So many things to try! High five to elastic band pants! lol
In the name of experience only (and certainly not gluttony) I have dutifully kept on working on this cookie dough in the past week. I am happy to report that the many attempts at obtaining nice mountain shaped cookies will not have been in vain as I finally reached this ultimate goal in life with my last trial! Yay me!
I added a bit more flour, closer to 2 cups, which showed me how right you were about different flours within the same type being completely different, and i followed your trick of freezing the pre-made balls of dough. That was a slightly longer process: because the dough was too sticky to roll right after mixing it, i stuck it in the fridge as is for about an hour, or until i remembered to tend to it, then i rolled it into cylinders and back in the fridge. I only put them in the freezer a half hour before baking them so they wouldnt be completely frozen. I kept the lower temperature and voila! Nice thick cookies, still not quite as perfect as yours and different in color as well (ive been wondering how you get that whitish color on the outside) but im thinking the flour here is the culprit and not much i can do about that where I am.
Now the final verdict: after all this, the trials, the questions, the forced binging on cookies… I think Im going back to my flat cookies! 😀 The nice thick cookies are beautiful but also much more cakey and I really love the almost-caramel-like-chewiness of the flat ones.
Nevertheless, it has been a super fun and educative experience! Thank you for sharing it!
Oh my goodness, Eva!!! Your dedication is remarkable! 🙂 I am glad you finally achieved the cookie heights you desired!
The amount of flour is one reason why I really wish Americans would hop on board the weighted measurement train, because there is inevitably a different between how I scoop 1 cup of flour and how everyone else does it. I read that the difference can be over 1/4 a cup for each cup of flour! And then there is the different protein content – the bag of AP flour in my cupboard with 4g of protein per 1/4 cup is going to provide a chewier, stronger cookie than the one with only 2g. This is why baking is a combination of art and science!
I looked at my before and after photos in Lightroom and the whitish color is partially from adjusting the exposure, so don’t stress too much about that. The camera also dulls colors, which leads to a totally different kind of frustration! They were never dark on the outside but they were like a light brown.
This is definitely the only cookie that I pre-roll and refrigerate before baking. It’s too much effort and I am way too lazy for that! Your description of the flat ones sounds amazing! I will need to try them flat 🙂 Thank you so much for coming back and reporting your results! Happy baking!
I’m prepping these tonight to make them for my workplace tomorrow. Super excited to see how they turn out. Here’s a question for you – do they spread when baking? I found that I ended up with closer to 30 cookies than 20, and even the 20 on the pan are a snug fit. Alsooo I don’t have any parchment paper because it’s the one thing I forgot, so I lightly greased the pan… Hopefully that won’t hurt anything?
Hi Carly! They don’t spread that much but they do spread a little (the colder your dough, the less they spread). I bake mine in batches on two cookie pans, so while one sheet is in the oven I am rolling the cookie dough balls for the next sheet. If you don’t have two sheets then you can bake one batch (the number that will fit depends on the size of your pan) and then when that pan cools keep the rest of the dough in the refrigerator. I hope greasing the pan worked and your coworkers enjoyed them!
I guessed that the refrigerating might help with potential spreading, and it ended up working out pretty great in spite of not having parchment paper, too. ^_^ They were really delicious – I was a little nervous about cooking them too long and might have undercooked them but honestly no complaints either way; who doesn’t like a melt-in-your-mouth cookie?
Thanks for getting back to me – I’ll definitely be using this recipe again!
I’m so glad they worked out, Carly! I underbake my cookies too because I love a soft and chewy center! You can also freeze the dough in balls and bake them as you want them – they just need to bake a few minutes longer. I have some in my freezer in Atlanta right now!
These are on my 2014 holiday cookie list. I can’t wait for this deliciousness to happen. Pinned!
I made the list! Thanks, Jennie!
I made these cookies about a week ago, and OH MY GOSH! These are heaven in my mouth! They’re so moist, it’s amazing. My husband said they were too rich, he could only eat two. Fine by me! My toddler and I devoured the rest. lol your site is now my go-to for all cookie recipes! I actually just whipped up some cream cheese chocolate chip dough (it’s in the fridge right now). I can’t wait to see how those blow me away!
Hi Kayla! I am soooo happy to hear that! I do love cookies and I take them very seriously! 🙂 I still have some dough of the Nutella ones in my freezer (I have them stashed in the back so my husband can’t find them.) Let me know what you think of the Cream Cheese C.C. I absolutely LOVE those. The dough freezes well for those too. Enjoy!
Oh wow! The cream cheese cookies were delicious too! I’ll admit, I was nervous making them because I’ve never heard of using cream cheese in cookies. But my oh my, they are good! I had them done right as my husband was walking in from work. He literally ate a plate full lol needless to say, they’re a hit here!
Haha! I am thrilled that you loved those too! I think the cream cheese ones taste like the Soft Batch kind you buy at the supermarket (except better because they are homemade!). I gave some to the concierge and the postman, and they were fighting over that last few. I need to make them again soon…I think my freezer stock is running low! Enjoy!
I LOVE how gorgeously thick these cookies are!! And this…. “I use Ghirardelli, in case you’re new around here”… is perfection. Ghirardelli is my thing too. 😀
Haha! I wish they would pay me to say it, but, sadly, right now it is just my firm opinion!
I really need to try these. Was looking for cocoa or dark chocolate chip cookies recipe, this seems very nice.
It is delicious but it isn’t overwhelmingly chocolatey. If that is what you want, you should try these Quadruple Chocolate Pudding Cookies
Glad you were able to try my recipe! Your cookies look great!
Thanks for the fabulous recipe, Averie!
I looove hazelnuts and it’s all thanks to Nutella! THESE COOKIES LOOK SO FRACKING GOOD! All soft and chewy and gooooooey
I’ll have to keep trying hazelnuts just to make sure! These cookies are so right up your alley!