Hazelnut-Chocolate-Maple-Brown Butter Shortbreads

I love shortbread cookies – the crisp, crumbly texture is perfect accompanied by hot drinks. So say I but these hazelnut-chocolate-maple-brown-butter ones were different from what I expected.

I enjoyed them but the texture, at first was a touch too sandy, a bit sable-like, and crumbled easily. For best results, I recommend letting them sit for a few days after baking – the texture rounds off as they soften a touch, and become moister.

Anyway, back to the beginning. It was this past summer, in Paris where I got some ground hazelnut meal. And thus, this idea was born.

This was such an interesting experiment – the cookies ended up really short, sandy, and crumbly. They didn’t hold together fresh out of the oven and I had to let them cool overnight.

Though the recipe was similar to my bergamot shortbread, I realized that some changes, plus adding cocoa powder (which absorbs water in a mix and tends to dry the dough out) shaped how these turned out, with much less water or liquid. Here’s what I did to prep:

• I used browned butter. The process of browning butter causes the water to evaporate
• I used teff flour and hazelnut meal – both of which lack gluten. Then I combined them, toasted the mix which would have removed any moisture
• I made some maple icing sugar – grinding maple sugar until fine
• And I added some coffee and vanilla to deepen and round off the flavors

Some substitutions you might consider:

• Use regular icing sugar if you don’t have
• Use only all-purpose flour
• Replace the hazelnut meal with almond meal

Things I’ll do next time

• Leave the candied orange out of the dough, perhaps do a chocolate dip post-bake, topping with the candied oranges – they made the dough fall apart when cutting, and baked hard and crunchy in the finished cookies – they ended up like gravel though I still enjoyed them 🙂
• Add some moisture and emulsifier – use regular butter, and if I use brown butter, possibly adding an egg yolk I think – I haven’t quite worked out my reasoning yet :), maybe a couple of tablespoons of cream as well.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (1/2 pound, 227g) brown butter, cooled but soft, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup maple icing sugar
• 3/4 cup regular icing sugar, plus extra for the orange sugar to roll a portion of the dough
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, vanilla paste, and q/2 teaspoon vanilla powder combined with 1 teaspoon instant coffee
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1/2 cup hazelnut meal
• 1/4 cup brown teff flour
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s)
• 2 tablespoons chopped candied orange
• Orange sugar. Optional, to coat some of the dough. Made by combining 1/4 cup dried orange peel with 1/2 cup sugar, and blitzing until somewhat smooth. Then passed through a sieve to collect the fine sugar – you can reserve the bits for other uses)

Directions

Prepare 2 pieces of parchment to wrap the logs – you could also use them to receive the sifted flour mix, and to line the baking pans.

You can do this by hand, with a mixer – hand or stand, or in the food processor. I went the latter route. In a food processor, combine the brown butter, maple sugar, and 3/4 cup regular icing sugar. Blitz until combined, and lighter in color, and a touch fluffy, about 2 minutes. Stop 2 or 3 times to sweep the sides in with a spatula.

Add the vanilla extract – coffee mix, and salt, and blitz again to combine, about 1 minute.

Combine the all-purpose flour, with the teff-hazelnut mix, and the cocoa powder. Stir well until uniform. Sift into parchment – you’ll use it to line the pans. There will be some pits left in the sieve, add that back into the sifted flour mix.

Add the flour mixture into the creamed butter-sugar and blitz, until it mostly comes together, and there aren’t any flour patches. Gently mix with a spatula.

The dough will be soft. Split it into 2 in the food processor.

Dough #1 – Add one half of the dough onto 1 piece of parchment and roll into a tight, smooth log, about 2 inches in diameter, and 10 inches long.

Dough #1 – For the sugar-crusted log, set out the other piece of parchment. Spread out some fine orange sugar to make a bed. Add the dough, top with the candied orange and gently mix in with a spoon. Coat in the sugar and roll into a tight, smooth log, about 2 inches in diameter, and 10 inches long.

Wrap and chill the dough logs until firm all the way through, about 2 hours or overnight. And yes, you may also have to let them soften at room temperature when you’re ready to bake.

Preheat the oven to 325°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Slice the cookies into ½-inch rounds. There is often a flat rim that you could gently shape so the cookies are round.

Place the cookies onto the trays, 1 inch apart and bake for 17 to 18 minutes.

These cookies don’t do well in the lift-to-check-bottom-is-golden test so I had to go with my gut feel.

Once out of the oven, they are not immediately cohesive – they will crumble and fall apart if you try to take them off the tray. I left them to cool overnight, on the trays they baked in, set on racks.

The next day, with a touch of shimmy-shaking, they came off the sheets, and taste so so so good! I will make them again, with some adjustments :). Enjoy!