Hazelnut Chocolate Kisses Recipes

CHOCOLATE-HAZELNUT SMOOCHES

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
• In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
• In another medium bowl, place the chocolate hazelnut spread, butter, and both sugars. Using a hand mixer, cream the ingredients together, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and blend until incorporated. Stir in the dry ingredients, just until incorporated.
• Shape the cookie dough into walnut-sized balls. Rolls the balls in the orange sprinkles or orange sugar, pressing to adhere. Place the cookies on a heavy cookie sheet about 4 inches apart. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven. Quickly place a chocolate kiss in the middle of each cookie. Return the cookies to the oven and bake for another 3 minutes. Cool the cookies on a wire rack.

HAZELNUT KISSES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toast hazelnuts in oven on a rimmed baking sheet until skins split and flesh turns deep golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes.
• When nuts are cool enough to handle, rub off as much of the skin as will come off easily. Let cool completely.
• Process nuts in a food processor with 1/4 cup sugar until very fine.
• Beat egg whites with the salt in the bowl of an electric mixer (or by hand), until soft peaks form. Add remaining 1/2 cup sugar, and beat until egg whites hold stiff (but not dry) peaks.
• Add nut mixture, flour, and vanilla to egg whites; beat until just combined. Refrigerate, covered, until cold, at least 1 hour or up to 1 day.
• Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat baking mat. With cool, dampened hands, mold heaping tablespoons of dough into pyramid shapes, each about 1 1/2 inches wide and 1 1/4 inches high. Transfer to lined sheet.
• Bake cookies until edges and bottoms begin to brown, 15 to 18 minutes.

HAZELNUT MERINGUE KISSES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 225°F. and line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Fit a large pastry bag with a 1/2-inch plain tip.
• In a bowl with am electric mixer beat whites with cream of tartar and salt until they just hold soft peaks. Add sugar in a stream and beat in vanilla and espresso and cocoa powders, beating until meringue holds stiff, glossy peaks.
• Working quickly, fold ground hazelnuts into meringue gently but thoroughly and fill pastry bag with meringue. Pipe 42 dots (each about 1/2 teaspoon) of meringue onto parchment 1/2 inch apart and top each dot with a whole hazelnut (meringue dots will anchor nuts). Pipe meringue over hazelnuts, encasing them, to form cookies about 1 inch wide and 1 3/4 inches high.
• Bake cookies in middle and lower third of oven, switching positions of baking sheets halfway through baking, 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until meringue os form on the outside and pale golden (cookies will fall during baking). Remove parchment with cookies from baking sheets and cool on racks (cookies will continue to crisp as they cool). Carefully peel cookies off parchment.
• In a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate, stirring until smooth, and remove from het. Dip top half of each cookie in melted chocolate, transferring cookies, chocolate sides up, to a wax-paper-lined tray. Chill cookies until chocolate is hardened, about 15 minutes. Cookies keep, arranged in layers between sheets of wax paper in an airtight container and chilled, 5 days.