My best friend from college, Kayla, is obsessed with Nutella and pretzels. In college, it was always her go-to snack and now whenever she comes to visit, I make sure I always have it on hand! She likes lots of other things now too, but still it’s a happy snack with lots of good memories. So I decided I would try to make this snack into a delicious cookie. This cookie has crunchy edges, chewy insides, salty crunch from pretzels, and sweet, chocolatey, nutty swirls from Nutella. What’s not to like?
First you will start by making my favorite base cookie dough, which if you have been following along, you know involves brown butter. After you brown your butter, you will combine it with the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Then add your dry ingredients to form the base dough. Then you’ll mix in the pretzels until they are fully distributed. Once you have the dough with the mix-ins complete, you’ll swirl in the Nutella through the dough so you will get bits of regular cookie dough, bits of Nutella cookie dough, and bits of pretzel in each bite. Delicious!
Just a note on the dough – you really need to pack it together when forming the cookie balls. You will also need to flatten the balls into disks before baking. The Nutella has a lot of sugar in it, so these cookies caramelize a bit quicker than usual. So you want to bake them for less time. It will result in a cookie with nice crisp edges but a very chewy center.
Finished dough 
Dough balls before flattening 
Finished cookie
Nutella Pretzel Swirl Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups crushed pretzels
- 1 cup Nutella
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375F.
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, cook the butter, stirring often, until it browns. First it will melt, then bubble, then foam, then brown. This will take about 5-8 minutes. Set aside and let cool slightly.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and both granulated and brown sugars until incorporated.
- Add the eggs and vanilla and beat on medium-high until the mixture is light and thickened, about 1 minute.
- Mix in the pretzel pieces with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until evenly dispersed. Then add the cup of Nutella and swirl it throughout the dough. The dough should be streaky, where you see some dough without Nutella and some with. *A note on this dough: it is a bit more crumbly than regular chocolate chip cookie dough because of the addition of the Nutella. So when forming balls in the next step, you will really want to pack the dough together and leverage the warmth from your hands to form nice balls.
- Scoop the cookies using a 1-oz ice cream scoop. Form into a ball with your hands and then flatten to form a disk. These cookies have a lot of sugar in them from the addition of the Nutella so they will caramelize very quickly, so you want to maximize the amount of surface area that is getting heat so they cook through a bit more quickly.
- Place the cookie disks on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for about 6 minutes, or until they are just starting to set. The bottoms and edges should be golden brown and set. The centers will still be quite soft, but they will firm up as they cool.
- If you like your cookies darker (like Jared!) they can be baked for about 9 minutes, but the bottoms will be quite dark. If you like a crunchy, caramelized cookie – then this will be your jam! Either way, let them cool for a bit on the baking sheet so they can firm up, before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
