Chocolate Hazelnut Melting Moments

As promised from last time, here are the Chocolate Hazelnut Melting Moments.  Chocolate-hazelnut cookies sandwich a creamy chocolate-hazelnut filling.  I'm not sure how these are hazelnut variations of Melting Moments, which I made previously.  The recipes aren't similar, and this hazelnut recipe lacks the cornstarch or Bird's custard powder that you often see in Melting Moments recipes.  The taste and consistency are different, though wonderful in their own way.  They're chocolate and hazelnut, so how could they not be?  They just deserve their own name.

The dough can be a little fussy to work with.  Once the dough starts to get melty and tear, and the rounds don't hold their shape when handled, toss the remaining dough into the freezer, parchment sheets and all, to firm up before cutting again.  It's a little labor intensive, but they are well worth it.

Hazelnut Baci

Sometimes summer makes me overlook chocolate.  I get so excited about strawberries, peaches, plums, cherries, and especially watermelon, that chocolate can get relegated to all the months I don't enjoy these fruits in season.  Then I tasted these cookies at a picnic, and liked them so much I had to make them.  Soft, crackly chocolate-hazelnut cookies sandwich a layer of Nutella in little bites.

We enjoyed them at our recent Jane Austen book club picnic at World's End, and boy do we know how to do picnics right.  My contributions were fried chicken, scones, and plum skillet cake.  Rebecca made her "Austen" cucumber sandwiches and the most delicious nectarine-steeped iced tea, and brought real china teacups!  And Mrs. Hot Potato, or "the Mrs.," as she's known on her blog, made these hazelnut baci and lemon-lavender shortbread.  Yum.

The Mrs. adapted her Baci di Cioccolato (chocolate kisses) recipe to use hazelnuts instead of almonds and Nutella instead of ganache.  I followed her instructions but was stumped about measuring out the dough.  The original recipe calls for shaping the dough into logs of a certain diameter and then cutting up pieces.  That sounded fussy, so I can see why the Mrs. used an ice cream scoop.  I didn't know what size she used, and if I wasn't making these on my wacky schedule in the middle of the night I would have asked her.  I used my "tablespoon" scoop, but those turned out too big, like Oreos, and a little flat though they tasted just as good.

Wonder about using sanding or sparkling sugar?  Don't.  I experimented, and it was pretty but too crunchy.

For my second try, I did what I call "the insurance policy": I froze the dough balls to help maintain a round shape and made them in 3 sizes, figuring one of those sizes had to be right.  Turns out using the tablespoon scoop and then halving those pieces makes the perfect two-bite cookie.  And this cookie is definitely making an appearance come Christmas cookie basket time.  Some relatives will be very happy indeed.

Butterflies kept us company during the picnic.