Newlywed Vegetarian: Butter-Nutella Cookies

Sorry for no update earlier this week--I was at home sick, and as I've mentioned before we have no internet at home.

Plus I don't cook much when I'm sick, and this is the only "real" recipe I have photos for right now. I made them last week!

Anywho--

I love butter. As in, really love butter. One of the main reasons I am vegetarian and not vegan is that my life would seem just a little bit sadder without butter. You may have noticed all the butter in my recipes--there is a reason for that. This one may take the cake (or the cookie), though. I mean, "butter" is in the name.

By the way, I'd just like to say here that I was really glad while reading the blog of Ree Drummond AKA the Pioneer Woman AKA Overachiever Extraordinaire to find that she also sometimes has trouble finding names for her recipes. This recipe went through so many combinations before I realized that if I included everything that I wanted to (Almond-Nutella-Butter Drop Cookies) I would effectively just be listing most of the ingredients. That's what the ingredients list is for.

And that is why they are now Butter-Nutella Cookies only.

This recipe was a happy "accident" that happened when I was trying to make one of my favorite recipes out of my Ultimate Cookies Cookbook last year.

They say you can tell how good and loved a cookbook is by how dirty the pages get when you cook with them. At least, that's what my mom says, and I tend to agree. This is a very well-loved cookbook (and recipe!)

Shortly into making these, though, I realized that I was missing one of the key ingredients: chocolate chips. However, I had Nutella and almonds. And so, here we are.

They were a hit! I hope they will be for you, too.

Let's get down to it:

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 13-15 mins

Yields: 1 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 cup butter (or two sticks)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2-3/4 cup almonds, sliced or crushed
Nutella, as needed

1. Combine flour and confectioner's sugar.

In a separate dish, melt or soften the butter.

Add in the vanilla extract.

Pour the butter mixture into the flour mixture.

Start to mix with the spoon.

At some point, though, you'll have to abandon the spoon and mix with your hands (or ask your Hubby to.).

Add in almonds. The first time I did this I used whole almonds that I crushed, but this time I went with sliced since we had a giant bag of them in the house.

The dough will be very crumbly, but it will mostly hold its shape while baking (which means none of the normal spreading out nonsense).

2. Mold cookies into 1-inch balls.

Flatten slightly and press your thumb into the center to create a small indent. I've found that since this is such a crumbly dough, you'll have to reform them a bit after making the indent in the center.