Did you make the toasted hazelnut shortcrust pastry? Great choice!!! In half an hour you’ll be able to enjoy some hazelnut cookies that are simply amazing!!! 😍

I rarely use the word “amazing” to describe something I made, but this time there really are no other words for these hazelnut cookies, made with local hazelnuts (well… just about 4-something km away 😄), which I praised in the previous post. These hazelnuts are, seriously, absolutely… astonishingly good!!

At first I wanted to call these hazelnut cookies “shortbread bites” instead of cookies. It sounded more professional to me.
Eating them gave me the feeling they weren’t even made by me — truly! They turned out so perfect in flavor, so crunchy, and just the right amount of crumbly. Such a damn good taste that they almost didn’t seem… I don’t know how to explain… they didn’t even seem homemade!

🥰 Ahahahah! I laugh as I write!!! 😄 I just reread what I wrote. Ahah!! Sometimes it’s not easy to describe a feeling! “…they didn’t even seem homemade”…
Ahahah! Erm… I didn’t mean they seemed store-bought, nor that they looked professionally made, and… I didn’t mean that my usual cookies are so bad that… ahahah… that these hazelnut cookies didn’t seem made by me because they were too good to be mine! Ahahah! Help, I’m getting tangled! 😅
Anyway, ahah! I could have deleted that paragraph but I’m here laughing alone at my computer and I don’t want to forget this silly moment! Uahah!

Back to the recipe!
Do you trust me? I hope so. So… make these hazelnut cookies!!! Get some good hazelnuts (this is essential — they must be good quality) and then prepare this shortcrust pastry; everything else will follow!
You will get simple, rustic cookies with little butter and little sugar — because I like my shortcrusts that way, not too buttery and not too sweet — but with a flavor, a real flavor!!!! 😋

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Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Medium
Rest time: 30 Minutes
Preparation time: 20 Minutes
Portions: 28 pieces
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients

1 block toasted hazelnut shortcrust pastry
as needed hazelnuts

Tools

Cutting boards
Baking tray
Parchment paper

Steps

Prepare the toasted hazelnut shortcrust pastry following the base recipe.
After letting the dough rest in the refrigerator for at least half an hour, proceed to make the cookies.
Form small balls of dough with your hands, then press them slightly with the palm of your hand or with a rolling pin, as I tried to do because I wanted to obtain a sort of indentation.
Decorate each cookie with a hazelnut (or not).
👉 The 50 grams of chopped hazelnuts in the dough provide an intense, fragrant flavor that I find optimal, so an extra whole hazelnut on top may not be necessary for taste. But the eye wants its part too, and cookies with a hazelnut in the center are prettier to look at, don’t you agree?, while still remaining rustic, homemade-style cookies.
Arrange the cookies on a tray lined with parchment paper and bake for 15–20 minutes at 356°F.
👉 You can get cookies with a crunchy exterior and a slightly softer interior by baking them for no more than 15 minutes. Or they become true crunchy, crumbly shortbread cookies by baking them a few minutes longer and then leaving them in the turned-off oven for 5–10 minutes. Naturally, you can make them thinner too, but I find them really tasty at this thickness.
Have a good breakfast!
Have a nice snack!
Enjoy your coffee break!
In short… any time is a good time to enjoy a hazelnut cookie! 😋