Hey everyone! Welcome back. I’m back again with another baking venture. This time, I made chocolate chip hazelnut cookies. They’ve got everything I could want in a cookie: chocolate, and hazelnuts to make me feel ‘healthy’ and less of a fatass.
At this time of year (September–October), most of them have ripened and started dropping. I figured making chocolate chip cookies with hazelnuts would give me a good excuse to go out and forage for some. Not too many, though. Only a handful’s worth so there’d still be plenty for wildlife.
If you wanna try and make the most of them too then you gotta know about the trees they grow on. Hazel trees (Corylus avellana) are a native species here in the UK. They grow in places like hedgerows, scrub, and woods. They’re smaller than the other nut-growing trees we have like oak and the chestnuts. Hazel normally only get up to 3–8 meters tall.
One interesting thing about hazel is how often it gets coppiced. Coppicing is when a tree gets cut down to ground level and then grows back new stems from its base stump (the stool). That’s why when you see a hazel tree, you may think it’s several small trees growing in a bunch when it’s actually one big tree.
The concept of coppicing might sound like tree torture, but it’s actually really good for them. A hazel tree lives for about 80 years when it’s left to itself; if it gets coppiced, it can live for hundreds of years. I wouldn’t think something that makes you live longer would be bad for you.
When it comes to IDing hazel, I’d say it’s one of the easiest British trees to ID. As I mentioned earlier, coppiced hazel trees grow several stems from the same stool. These younger stems tend to grow out in long shoots. They’re very straight but very bendy. The youngest ones in spring can be tied into a knot without snapping.
Hazel bark is smooth, shiny and brown. It’s got no knots and fewer fissures compared to something like oak bark. Most of it is fairly smooth, but if you look closer you’ll find some little yellow pores and scaly patches.
When there are leaves, it’s pretty easy to tell they’re from hazel. They’re round or oval shaped, have light serrations, and a stubby tip that’s tapered.
But it’s not just how they look that’ll help you with IDing. It’s how they feel. They have tiny hairs that look like peach fuzz. So when you touch a hazel leaf, it feels soft and fuzzy. Almost like velvet.
I think the easiest way to tell is by the nuts themselves (when they’re in season). I’m assuming you already know what ripe hazelnuts look like.
In case you don’t, they look like these:
Before they ripen and drop down, they look a little bit different. They’re smaller, green and held in these leafy husks (called bracts) that wrap around them like my mouth when I try fitting a scotch egg inside.
This was a lucky shot because there’s a bonus ladybird on one of them:
As it ripens, both the nut and the bracts wrapped around it slowly turn brown.
While foraging for hawthorn berries to make the jam I wrote about, there’s also this spot I found where there were these humongous hazelnuts. The biggest ones I’ve ever laid my eyes on. What was the catch? Most of them were empty. I couldn’t feel the actual nut rattling around inside. It was like shaking Christmas presents to test if there’s Lego. And all you hear is emptiness.
Fast forward to the 25th of September and I was back to foraging for hazelnuts. I looked at my calendar and thought, “Oh, this’ll be a great time to find them! More would’ve dropped by now!” Turned out to be right, but that wasn’t the problem. I found lots of hazelnuts; the broken shells of them.
You see, us humans aren’t the only ones who love snacking on them. Bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus), dormice (Muscardinus avellanarius), wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), woodpeckers, and of course, squirrels. Both the red and grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) eat them. You know if a hazelnut has been eaten by a squirrel because the shell will be cleanly cracked in half.
You’ve probably heard of how invasive grey squirrels are and how they’ve been outcompeting the native red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris). Now, there are nearly 3 million of these assholes who’ve become much more common than the reds. So if you see any cracked nuts lying on the ground, it’s most likely a grey that did it.
I’m guessing the area where I looked was overrun with greys: there were nearly no whole nuts left. In the hour or so spent trying (trying being the keyboard), I found a total of six nuts.
I’m not even joking, here’s a photo:
The greedy b*****ds ate the lot. You know what I think? Bring back more pine martens (Martes martes) to sort these out. And then bring back the reds.
Anyway, that’s enough of me ranting. I had to think of a plan B. If I can’t get hazelnuts from nature, I’ll get them from man…by that I mean Tesco. I just bought a bag. Very begrudgingly. I picked up the rest of the ingredients I needed as well.
The recipe I used comes from BBC Good Food and calls for seven ingredients: butter, flour, hazelnuts, chocolate chips, sugar, vanilla essence, and a single egg. It says brown sugar to be specific. I’m not buying an entire new bag of sugar, so I used some leftover caster sugar.
Also, it’s funny how it uses grams for some of the ingredients but then cups for others. I just used grams because cups are stupid.
So I got the stuff and was ready to start baking. I went from Bear Grylls to Mary Berry. Okay, the first step is to mix about 180 grams of flour and 150 grams of sugar…in a mixing bowl. Crazy, right?
What’s even crazier is how I thought I could incorporate 125 grams of butter with the “rubbing in” technique. Then I read the recipe closer and realised you have to melt the butter like my brain cells when I read Quora questions.
That’s why I had this heart-stopping block of butter sat in my bowl:
So add the melted butter, egg (the egg white and yolk together), and teaspoon of vanilla. Mix all these liquids into the flour and sugar, and combine them to form a cookie dough.
Next come this recipe’s shining stars: the chocolate chips and the hazelnuts. I used about two handfuls of hazelnuts, but I’ve got big manly hands so adjust the amount according to your hands. Or however many nuts you want. It’s up to you.
I ended up using the entire bag of chocolate chips, which was about 100 grams.
And these milk chocolate chips were built different because they were not melting in my hand even slightly.
After adding these and mixing them in, you should have what looks like a regular chocolate chip cookie dough. Plus the nuts.
Then what you wanna do is take chunks out and roll them into balls. How big or small the balls should be depends how many you wanna make. Cookies, not kids.
Like some rare medical condition, I made my balls about the size of golf balls and that made six big ones. Amy let me use her Betty Crocker baking tray.
Once you’ve got your balls all ready, I want you to squish them flat like you’re making hamburger patties. Try to make them as evenly thick as possible so they all cook at the same time.
Then set the oven to 180 degrees; Celsius if you like your cookies actually cooked. The recipe says they should only take 10–12 minutes…it took mine half an hour. Probably because we have a s****y student house oven. Leave them to bake until they’re golden brown. Since I used self-raising flour, my cookies expanded quite a bit.
As tempted as you are to pry your cookies off the tray, that’s not the best idea. When they’re fresh right out of the oven, the cookies are still soft. And if you rush and try moving them too soon, they’ll just fall apart. Trust me, Amy tried. Best thing to do is let them cool.
They ended up looking [and tasting] absolutely brilliant. The texture was interesting (in a good way). Crumbly like a cookie yet somehow soft like cake. One of my housemates said it was “almost bread-like”, and it kinda reminded her of a shortbread biscuit. That might’ve been the self-raising flour.
The chocolate is rich and smooth, and you get that nice crunch from a nut in every other bite. I think these two different textures work really well together. Overall, these cookies were an absolute win for me.
I hope guys liked the post. Link and share or the squirrels will be breaking into your house — no one’s safe. See you in the next one. Stay straying!