Browned Butter Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

1. Dollop the Nutella in 1-tablespoon size portions onto a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and place in the freezer until ready to use, at least 20-30 minutes.

2. Cut the butter into 1 tablespoon size pieces, and place into a sauté pan over medium heat. Stir until the butter is melted then keep heating and stirring. Remove the browned butter from the heat immediately when it looks light golden brown. Place into a bowl or container and let it sit for 10 minutes before proceeding in the recipe (see note below).

3. Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Set aside. Place the browned butter into the bowl of a stand mixer (you can use a hand mixer as well). Add the brown sugar and the white sugar, and beat with the paddle attachment on medium speed until combined and smooth. Beat in the egg, egg yolk, vanilla extract, and sour cream just until combined.

4. Add the dry ingredients slowly and mix on low speed until almost just combined. Pour in the chocolate chips and mix until just combined (see note below).

5. Take the Nutella dollops out of the freezer. Take out a large cookie scoop. Scoop the dough so that the scoop is about halfway filled and press the cookie dough into the scoop. Squish a frozen Nutella dollop into the cookie dough then top with additional cookie dough so that the cookie scoop is filled to the top. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough. Place all the cookie dough balls on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, cover with more foil, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (the dough can be made up to 3 days in advance).

6. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Place 6 cookies on the mat at a time, leaving plenty of space between them. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the cookies are puffy and golden brown. As soon as you take them out of the oven, sprinkle them with a bit of kosher salt (do not be heavy handed with this, we want just little bites of saltiness). Let cookies cool for 10 minutes, then move to a cooling rack until completely cool (or eat them warm!). Repeat baking the remaining cookies. Enjoy!

Notes:
1. Substitutions for these cookies are as follows: dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar, regular or vanilla Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, milk or dark chocolate chips (or a combination of both) instead of semisweet chocolate chips, and sea salt instead of kosher salt.
2. Do not proceed immediately after browning the butter, as the hot butter will scramble the eggs in your cookie dough, which is no bueno. Also, don’t put the browned butter immediately from the sauté pan to the bowl of the stand mixer, because the stand mixer will keep the butter hot forever.
3. Mix your cookies only until just combined. Over-mixing results in tough, unsatisfying, weirdly-textured cookies.

Adapted from Ambitious Kitchen.