Chocolate Hazelnut Kiss Cookies and a Double Holiday Giveaway!

Christmas day is in 26 days and that means the Cake Duchess kitchen is busy! The latest cookies we baked are these Chocolate Hazelnut Kiss Cookies! There is chocolate every where! Recipes are strewn across my counter. We do make an exorbitant amount of cakes here…but we also LOVE cookies.

Hershey’s Kiss Cookies is one of the cookies I look forward to making every Christmas. I make it the way you probably make it: peanut butter cookie and a sweet kiss on top.

This year I decided we need a little more chocolate. And some nicely chopped and toasted hazelnuts. Funny how the cookie tastes like Nutella, but there is not a drop of Nutella in it! I had to stay away from Nutella for at least a week;)

These cookies will be a new Christmas tradition with our family. I had so much fun making each cookie with my kids. Their favorite part was rolling the cookie into the toasted (and cooled) hazelnuts. Eating the leftover Kisses while the cookies were in the oven were the 2nd best part!

Let’s get on to my FABULOUS Holiday cookie recipe!!

Chocolate Hazelnut Kiss Cookie
yield: approximately 40 cookies (depending on how close to 1-inch round you make the cookie balls. Don’t worry, you can eat the extra Kisses while the cookies are baking;)

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for the work surface
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt
1 cup butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
4 large egg yolks
2/3 cups unsweetened cocoa
1 cup finely chopped hazelnuts, toasted (approximately-I had some leftover)
40 Hershey’s Kisses

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare your cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Put the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt, and lemon zest in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Pulse briefly to combine the ingredients. Distribute the butter around the bowl and pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Add the egg yolks and process until the dough just begins to come together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and gather it together. Knead it briefly until the dough is smooth and shiny. Shape the dough into approximately 40 (1-inch)balls. Indent your thumb to faltten a little the middle of each ball and work around the edges of the cookie to smooth out the shape. There will be cracks in the cookie. Roll the sides of the balls into the hazelnuts. Press down gently and try to gather as many hazelnuts as you can without changing the shape of the cookie.

Bake the cookies a batch at a time for about 8 minutes. Remove cookie sheet from oven and add a Hershey’s kiss to each cookie. Press the Hershey’s Kiss down gently, and be careful not to burn yourself. Add the tray back to the oven and bake for about another minute. Depending on your oven-mine took about 10 minutes total to bake.

If you do not want to make the dough in a food processor, you can let the butter soften and you can mix the batter with a hand mixer. Email me if you need help with those directions.

Bake with your little ones. If you don’t have little ones, bake with your neighbor’s kids! My little guy loved to roll out his own cookies! Smile

He was ready to add Kisses even when it wasn’t time to add them!!