Gone 'Til November...

Until the end of the month, The State I Am In will officially be on hiatus while I travel through Italy with Dad. Check back in November for vacation photos and stories from our travels!

There's No Place Like Home...

Although I don't like keeping things from you, my loyal readers, there are certain things that I prefer to keep under my hat until I'm sure how they're going to shake out. Today, I have one of those things to report: Justin and I are moving in together!

Not only are we moving in together, we're buying a place! We started the process months ago, in May, when we started looking at condos. We found a place that we liked right off the bat, in Roger's Park on the city's far north side (a compromise between my job downtown and Justin's jobs in the northern suburbs), but it was a short sale, so we settled in for a long wait for approval from the bank. The process was fraught with setbacks, from disagreements with the seller to problems with the bank, and a seemingly endless string of delays. There were several times when it appeared that the entire deal would fall apart and we'd have to keep looking.

The approval from the bank finally came in September, in time for us to discover that the condo association had gone to court to petition for legal control over the unit (on the basis that the previous owner had stopped paying their assessment fees), in April, long before we had even looked at the place or made an offer, and everyone had neglected to tell us. Adding insult to injury, they had leased the place to a new tenant, effective in September, days before we got our approval to buy. The deal seemed dead in the water, and Dad, who is a real estate attorney, had never heard of a situation like it.

Luckily for us, it behooves the condo association to have a permanent owner instead of a temporary lessee, so they managed to work out a deal with the tenant to break her lease. The condo would be ours!

We closed on the deal today, and when I get back from Italy, Justin and I are going to start the arduous process of cleaning, painting, and moving in all our belongings. There will be paint to choose, furniture to select, and a decorative scheme to establish. I'll be sure to keep you posted on our progress, complete with photos.

This is an exhilarating, but terrifying step for the both of us. We're excited to start a new chapter in our life together, and take this step into adulthood hand-in-hand. The responsibilities and burdens of home ownership are daunting indeed, but it's a challenge we're willing to tackle together.  We're looking forward to learning new things about one another, and learning how to make compromises that will strengthen our relationship. Even though change can be scary, we both feel that this is the right step for us at this point in our lives, and we are both eager to see what the future will hold for us. Wish us luck!

Behind Closed Doors...

One of the things that has always captured my imagination about life in the city is the buildings; not just how they appear on the outside, though I've always been interested in architectural design, but what might be going on inside the behemoths of steel, glass, stone, and brick that populate the streets of Chicago. We all go on about our lives in a relatively limited number of spaces, but for every building we have an opportunity to enter, there are thousands for which we never have a reason to see the interior. What stories are unfolding in all those apartments and offices? We may never know, but it's an interesting question to consider.

This weekend, the Chicago Architecture Foundation gave the citizens of this fair city a chance to experience some of those mysterious buildings by granting them rare behind-the-scenes access to a number of public and private spaces across the Chicagoland area. I first learned about Open House Chicago, as the project was called, from my Facebook feed, where I follow the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau. Initially, I was most excited by the list of churches that would be open to the public for the weekend, as these sacred spaces can be notoriously difficult to visit if one doesn't want to sit through a service for the privilege. I was intrigued by a host of options on the city's west and south sides, but I couldn't find anyone to go along with me on Saturday, and the neighborhoods were a little too dicey for me to want to visit alone.

I was planning on visiting a few today with Justin, since he had the day off, but the threat of rain kept us confined to the Loop, where we could beat a hasty path home if the skies opened up upon us. After doing a hasty revision of my schedule for the day, I think we managed to curate a rather interesting tour of the city, which took us to some fascinating sites that we never would have been exposed to otherwise.

First, on Justin's insistence, we stopped at the Tribune Tower, whose iconic Neo-Gothic facade is one of the city's most identifiable landmarks. Due to its notoriety, the tour for the Tribune Tower required the longest line of the day, but I think we still waited no more than a half hour.

Completed in 1925, the Tribune Tower was designed to be a secular temple to freedom of the press. The interior is festooned with quotes about the right to self-expression, which is somewhat ironic in light of what the tour guide had to say about Colonel McCormick, the dictatorial, arch-conservative editor of the paper from the 1920s through the mid-1950s. I'm not sure the Colonel believed in anyone's freedom but his own, but I digress...

Case in point, the Colonel's private elevator, that went from the ground floor straight to his office, so he wouldn't have to mingle with the unwashed masses.

Apparently, the Colonel was also the kind of man who has his own quotes carved into the fireplace in his office. Classy.

The main thrust of the tour took us through the former publishers' offices, both the Colonel's and his cousin Joseph Patterson's, which feature sweeping views of the city. Patterson was apparently the paranoid type, as his office featured a staircase hidden in a wall that led to a unpopulated machinery floor where he would be able to take service stairs out of the building, should he be pursued by the members of the Chicago mafia who the paper often exposed and editorialized about during the Prohibition era. The Colonel's office was more an exercise in intimidation -- his desk faced away from the windows so that he would remain in shadow, and his visitors would have to squint to see him. He also had the room built with no door handles; his guests would leave when he decided they were good and ready.

Though the Tribune Building is probably the most famous of the places we went today, I think our tour of it was the least interesting. It was fairly limited in scope, though we did pick up a few interesting historical nuggets that we wouldn't have gleaned otherwise. 

From the Tribune Tower, we progressed in a southwesterly direction towards City Hall, stopping to pop into a few buildings along the way. We saw two churches, so the day wasn't a complete loss in terms of ecclesiastic architecture, but I'm going to save those for individual posts at some future date. On the secular front, we made one stop that I was particularly keen on seeing, though I think Justin was dubious about my selection: the Chicago Motor Club Building.

 

Located on East Wacker Drive, the Chicago Motor Club Building is a delightful gem of Art Deco design in the city of Chicago. During college, I had a pair of summer internships in the city at both the Chicago History Museum and the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Since I'd need to be downtown every day, my parents helped me find a summer apartment in the city, so I ended up living right around the corner from the Chicago Motor Club Building on Michigan Avenue. I'd pass it every day on my way to work at the MBC, and I became increasingly curious about it. It appeared to be abandoned, as its windows were dirty and nobody could ever be seen entering or leaving. I grieved a little that nobody seemed to be using it, and feared that it would eventually be torn down for a new development.

The lobby of the building features a quaint map of the country showing "major" highways of the day.

As it turns out, I was correct. The building has been vacant since 2005, and the collapse in the real estate market that accompanied the financial crisis means that its owners haven't been able to sell it. The owners decided to open it to the public for Open House Chicago, probably in the hopes of drumming up a bit of public interest in the property, and although I'm not in the market for a downtown commercial high rise, my curiosity was definitely piqued.

The Chicago Motor Club, which built the structure during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s, was founded near the turn of the 20th century by a group of "horseless carriage' enthusiasts. They worked to further the cause of the newfangled technology in the city by agitating for paved roads, and later, championed a number of safety causes like school crossing guards. Over time, the organization evolved into a type of travel organization, helping motorists plan road trips during the golden age of the interstate highway system. Eventually, the Chicago Motor Club could no longer compete with AAA, so it merged with the larger body and no longer needed its own space. Now, it's little more than an obscure municipal history footnote.

Art Deco details in the lobby of the Chicago Motor Club Building.

The interior of the Chicago Motor Club Building has definitely seen better days. The paint is peeling and the fixtures are dated, but it has good bones. Besides, it was kind of fun to imagine myself there in the 1960s, wearing a cute little pillbox hat and some white gloves, as I sought out guidance for a family vacation. Pretty keen, eh?

Our last stop for the day was City Hall, into whose imposing halls I have never had reason to tread, despite having been a Chicago resident for the past four years. Built in 1911, the building was designed by the notable local architecture firm of Holabird and Roche (curiously, the same architectural firm as the Chicago Motor Club Building, though the styles of the two are vastly different), with a curious layout that, we learned today, was meant to accommodate the later addition of a mid-rise tower in the center. That addition was never made, but the extra strength built into the roof was later utilized to bear the weight of the green-roof initiative begun by Mayor Richard M. Daley.

We walked past the office of my alderman, Bob Fioretti, a scuzzy career politician if ever there was one.

The interior of the building was rather unremarkable, as far as government buildings go, but the tour we were led on through the building provided surprising behind-the-scenes access. Apparently, Mayor Emmanuel (or M-Rahm, as I like to call him) was a big supporter of the Open House Chicago project, so he signed up City Hall as a way of welcoming the public into the apparatus of government. We were shown through the aldermanic offices, which, while not particularly interesting unto themselves, were nevertheless something that the public never gets to see. I was, at least, surprised by how humble and normal they seemed. I would have figured the aldermen would have mahogany paneling on the walls and chairs upholstered in $100 bills, but no such luck.

The highlight of the entire day came at City Hall, when we were ushered onto the floor of the Chicago City Council. We were allowed to roam at will, sitting in the aldermen's chairs, and even doing this:

Yes, this is me, standing at the mayor's podium. I could have sat in his chair too, but I demurred. Awesomely, sitting on the podium was a copy of the seating arrangement with each alderman's name and photo, for the Mayor's convenience. I was surprised they left that sitting there for the public tour...

Frankly, I can't believe we were offered that photo op for free, or that we were allowed that kind of access to the City Council chambers without having to pay for the privilege either. It was kind of shocking and amazing all at the same time. 

Despite my extensive reading of the Open House Chicago website, I was unable to discern whether this was the first year it has taken place, or if it will take place again. I most certainly hope the Chicago Architecture Foundation repeats this program, and if they do, I am absolutely going to make the most of it. I regret not going anywhere on Saturday, and getting a chance to visit more inaccessible spaces around the city. I'm glad I participated this year as much as I did, though, and I'll be on the lookout for information about more Open House Chicago events in the future.

X Marks the Spot...

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I really do have a fascinating and diverse group of friends, and I enjoy getting out of the house to support them in their myriad undertakings. For the past couple months, my friend, Darrell, has been pestering me to check out the new Dose Market, a monthly gathering of artisan food producers, small-collection fashion designers, local clothing boutiques, and home furnishing dealers. It's a place for small, independent businesses in Chicago to gain visibility and expand their customer base while creating a unique, quirky experience for attendees.

Darrell, who is seemingly pursuing a different venture every time I talk to him, has been working for a while with X-Marx, a collective of chefs who work outside the traditional notion of restaurant dining to experiment with new flavors and ideas in food. They do underground dining, where they create elaborate multi-course meals in non-formal settings, as well as pop-up restaurants in various spaces, where they can explore different ideas for a short period of time before moving on to the next thing. Operating this way gives them a great deal of flexibility.

X-Marx has been working with Dose since July, but I wasn't able to make it to one of the Dose events until last month, where I completely forgot to take any photos. Plus, as luck would have it, X-Marx took that month off, though some of its constituent members were there with another venture of theirs -- Mama's Nuts, a company that sells gourmet nut brittles and roasted, flavored nuts. I brought home some of their pecan brittle last month, and it was dangerously good. I'm not even going to own up to how embarrassingly fast the bag disappeared...

This month, however, I managed to drag myself out of bed to get to Dose in a timely manner (last month we came about half-way through the day, and most of the food producers were running out of free samples), so I could experience X-Marx's pop-up soda shop, Jo Jerx, a collaboration with fellow Dose vendor Jo Snow, a company which produces artisan syrups for everything from coffee to soda to snow cones. Though I knew it wouldn't really be his thing (given that he has a Y chromosome and all, and that tends to give men a predisposition against events centered around shopping) I took Justin along for good measure, so we could sample the maximum range of food products.

The menu.

My rootbeer float. I think this was actually my greatest disappointment of the day, as the rootbeer flavor was mild at best, and I didn't feel that it had enough ice cream.

My tuna melt.

Despite being friends with Darrell for going on three years now, I've never eaten any food that he's made, which is really kind of a travesty, when you think about it. For my entree into his cooking, I picked a tuna melt, a seemingly classic dish that the X-Marx group had reinterpreted with luxury ingredients like wild-caught tuna and aged gruyere cheese. Though it was good, it was a little too fancy for me; I guess I'm a traditionalist when it comes to these things.

Our "patty" melt.

On Darrell's recommendation, Justin and I split a "patty" melt, a meatless concoction that featured, among other things, figs, quinoa, caramelized onion, and butterkase cheese. All of those components were really quite tasty, and had a nice balance of salty, sweet, and savory flavors. My only gripe was that the rye bread it was served on was aggressively rye in flavor, and I absolutely loathe rye bread. I think it's mostly the caraway seeds that offend my palate, as I can sometimes tolerate rye that lacks them, or has low amounts of the seed. (Notably, caraway is part of a whole family of spices I can't stand, including fennel, dill, and cilantro. Ick.) 

I'm glad I can say now that I've tried Darrell's food, and done my small part to support X-Marx (though they clearly didn't need my support; they've been wildly successful lately, and founding member Abe Conlon was just named one of Time Out Chicago's "20 Chefs to Watch"). I still think it's important to do what you can to stand behind your friends. I'll be keeping an eye out for their next move; rumor has it that a brick-and-mortar restaurant is in the works, and if it is, I'll definitely be on hand to check it out...

Love Changes Everything...

One year -- that's how long I've been seeing Justin, as of today. Part of me is kind of in awe over this simple fact, not because I ever doubted that our relationship had staying power (in fact, I'm not sure I've ever been so certain about anything before), but because I spent a large portion of my life doubting that I'd ever reach this point with anyone. After 24 years of singledom, I often found myself wondering if I would ever fall in reciprocal love with someone, and whether I'd be able to make a healthy relationship last if I did. After so many years of failure, I'd come to believe that love might not be in the cards for me.

Now I see that those misfortunes and instances of heartbreak were vital in teaching me what I wanted, what to look for in a mate, and how to comport myself in a relationship if I wanted it to be successful. All of those experiences shaped me into the person who Justin fell in love with, and I wouldn't change that for the world, no matter how romantically miserable my teen and early adult years were. After all, I feel like I've hit the jackpot with Justin. I could not have hoped for a better partner, and I honestly feel like he is more than I probably deserve.

Being the kind of person who loves to dispense advice, whether it is solicited or not, I used to advise my romantically troubled girlfriends that dating isn't about finding perfection in one's mate; it's the process of finding and figuring out what flaws you can live with on an ongoing basis. Now that I have Justin in my life, however, I feel like I have been giving out bad advice. In no way do I feel like I am settling, or putting up with a lot from him. He might not be perfect, but he is perfect for me.

In the last year, we accomplished a lot together and grew as a couple, forging a bond that has only deepened with time. Without a doubt, the year to come will present changes and challenges for us, but I am confident we'll be able to work through any of them, and come out stronger on the other side. I look forward not only to my next year with Justin, but our entire future together. Happy anniversary, my love!

Happy Birthday To Justin...

Today marks the beginning of Justin's last year in his 20s. Practically ancient, right?

The past year has been exceptionally busy for my beloved. In the span of 365 days, he traveled out of state several times, weathered a bout of pneumonia, got four jobs, made new friends, went new places, tried new foods, learned new skills, and (most importantly, in my opinion) met and fell in love with me. Suffice it to say, he's had a lot on his plate since last October.

That's why I decided to celebrate him and usher him into what will hopefully be an equally happy new year on the planet with a birthday cake befitting the epic year he just had. I spotted his cake a few months ago, when an aimless stroll through the cookbook section of the Harold Washington Library left me sitting up in bed one night with a copy of Rose's Heavenly Cakes by baking guru Rose Levy Beranbaum. It takes gumption to name your second book The Cake Bible, but it seems, at least within the baking blogosphere, that Beranbaum does indeed have a sacrosanct reputation as the authority on cake baking. Even though I don't bake many cakes myself, I was curious as to what all the fuss was about, so I grabbed a copy of one of her books and paged through it.

For the large part, the recipes contained therein were too intimidating to even consider trifling with, and basically reaffirmed my desire to stay within my cookie comfort zone. However, there was one cake, a towering confection of lemon and white chocolate, that caught my attention. When I saw it, I thought, "Ooo, lemon, Justin would like that... maybe for his birthday?" But, I talked myself out of it quickly, as it seemed like far more than I really wanted to tackle at the time. 

Fast forward a few months though, and I was even more in love with Justin than I was when I first spotted that cake in Beranbaum's book. So completely besotted was I, that my overwhelming love inspired me to completely outdo myself in his honor. Hence, it was with this noble goal in mind that I undertook the single most complicated endeavor of my career in baking.*

The finished product. Sadly, after all that hard work, my cake decorating skills weren't quite up to par. I think the solution for my next cake will be getting a cake comb and using that to create decorative sides that will camouflage my sloppy icing work.

To create "Woody's Luxury Lemon Cake" as it appears in Rose's Heavenly Cakes so that it would be ready to eat on a Friday night, I had to allocate four consecutive evenings of baking. (The cake could be assembled in less time, but I work during the day so I had to space things out.) I turned down plans with friends, blew off dinner invitations, and hunkered down in my kitchen night after night, applying a level of self-discipline that only seems to manifest itself in my life when it comes to major baking projects. Justin, feeling a bit guilty I think about all the time I was planning to sink into his cake, offered to come over and help, but I demurred. Baking this cake would be like my equivalent of climbing Mount Everest -- it doesn't count if someone carries you part of the way up.

I briefly entertained the idea of writing a separate post for each phase of construction, including the recipes for each component, but I quickly came to my senses and realized that few people in their right mind would want to replicate this task at home. Instead, I'll summarize:

The birthday boy, at his family celebration.

On the first night, Monday, I started out by preparing a lemon curd that would serve as the filling for the cake. I actually think this was the easiest component of the entire process, even though I'd never made lemon curd from scratch before. I've used lemon curd from a jar for other desserts, but the homemade version is really much tastier (big surprise). I'm not a fan of lemon desserts in general (prompting the question from many why I was expending so much effort on baking something I wouldn't even enjoy eating -- again, it was a labor of love thing), but the homemade lemon curd was really pretty tasty.

For the second night, cake baking was on the agenda. I followed all of Beranbaum's anal-retentive, nit-picky instructions to the letter: I used freshly purchased cake flour instead of trying to make some sort of substitution using all-purpose flour and corn starch; I buttered the pans, added parchment paper rounds, then sprayed the entire thing with Pam with flour, even though all those steps seemed like overkill; I even purchased Valrhona brand white chocolate from the gourmet shop at the outrageous expense of $17/pound to be ensured of a white chocolate with a sufficiently high cocoa butter content. 

Still, in spite of doing everything as written, I still ran into some troubles. Beranbaum specifically instructed not to bake the cake until it pulled away from the edge of the pan as it would then be overdone, and therefore dry. However, the interior of the cake was still entirely liquid up until the point when this very thing happened. I think the cake was sufficiently moist, and the crumb was by far the finest, most uniform of any from-scratch cake I've ever made. Demanding as she is in her instructions, she may just be on to something...

I chilled the cake overnight, but allowed it to come to room temperature before serving. It cut like a dream.

Day three of the process was dedicated to what was, by far, the most stressful component of the cake for me -- the white chocolate vanilla bean buttercream frosting. Because I don't like frosting, I very seldom make it. In fact, I believe I could probably count on one hand the number of different frosting recipes I've made in all my years of baking. Factor into this lack of experience the fact that I was about to roll the dice with nearly $20 worth of artisan white chocolate, and the stakes suddenly became uncomfortably high. Plus, the online accounts I'd compulsively read of other, more experienced cake bakers who attempted this recipe were not exactly encouraging. Despite my misgivings, however, I soldiered on.

For a while, the frosting situation was indeed touch-and-go. The recipe, from what I understand about buttercreams, is somewhat unusual. Most buttercream frostings are made by creating some manner of stable meringue, then gradually incorporating butter and flavorings. This one called for the production of a white chocolate custard, which was to be cooked to a very specific temperature, then cooled to a specific temperature, then whipped into butter. (Did I mention that this cake was not low-cal? It included some 16.5 ounces of white chocolate, 17 eggs, and 4.5 sticks of butter. Hopefully, I did not shorten Justin's lifespan by baking this for him to celebrate his birthday!)

When I went to melt the white chocolate and butter for the custard, it quickly turned into a terrifying mess; the white chocolate turned lumpy and sunk to the bottom, while the melted butter sat on top in a vast, greasy slick. I was terrified that I'd screwed it up, but I managed to keep panic at bay long enough to take a whisk to the monstrosity and beat it into a semblance of being smooth and creamy. The eggs seemed to stabilize the mixture, and the recipe was smooth sailing, if demanding, from there.

The cross section. From the bottom up we have cake, lemon curd, cake, buttercream, cake, lemon curd, more cake, and the whole thing is covered with the beautifully vanilla-speckled frosting.

Finally, the day before the cake was to be served, I assembled the whole thing. Though I clearly need more practice splitting cake layers evenly, and my frosting skills need a lot of work (any volunteers out there want to eat my homework?), the assembly of the cake was the fastest part. Even if I had imagined it coming out much more attractive than I was able to realize in reality, I knew that it was ultimately going to be Justin's birthday cake, and he'd probably care more about how it tasted than how it looked.

After all that work, I did manage to produce a fairly tasty cake. I can't call it fantastically delicious because I really don't like lemon cake, but I managed to impress where it counted: Justin proclaimed it the best birthday cake he's ever had. He could be a little biased toward the chef, but I'm going to accept that compliment and move on. 

Texturally, it was the most perfect cake I've ever made. Plus, I did like the frosting, and that almost never happens. It was supremely smooth and silky, and though it did taste very rich, I felt that it made the cake live up to its moniker as an item of "luxury." Though it would have to be for a very special occasion, given the expense of the ingredients, I would definitely make that white chocolate vanilla bean buttercream again.

I will say, that conquering such an intense recipe left me feeling pretty good about my baking skills. I went into this project wanting to do something nice for Justin, but in the process, I managed to boost my own confidence and improve my skill set. But then, isn't that what is so great about love? When we give freely of it to others, we not only benefit them, but ourselves as well. As the Beatles said, "The love you take is equal to the love you make."

*My annual Cookie Bonanza requires at least as much time, and a great deal more planning to execute, but no single recipe that I prepare for that is as complicated or time consuming as this cake was to bake, not even the iced sugar cookies that are the star of the yearly giveaway.

Dream On...

With my trip to Italy just a couple weeks away, I've been thinking lately about some of my memories from my last two visits there when I was a teenager. Sadly, a lot of those memories are not particularly fond. My first time in Rome, our baggage got lost on the way there, and we were without fresh clothes and toiletries for a few days while the airline sorted things out, which was very distressing to my tween self. Plus, I got a massive case of food poisoning on our last day, which ranks as the second most-sick I can remember ever being in my lifetime. Venice, a couple years later wasn't much better -- I got bed bug bites all over my body at the cheap hostel where my student group was staying. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to creating some more positive memories during my upcoming visit.

One thing, however, that I do recall with unmitigated joy was my discovery of Nutella, at the age of 13, during my student trip to Italy. Everywhere we went for breakfast we were served fresh baked bread and little packets of Nutella. They were not only giving us permission to have chocolate for breakfast, they were going so far as to actually give it to us! I'd long been a connoisseur of other chocolate breakfast items like Cocoa Krispies, or my personal favorite, chocolate croissants, but Nutella was still a revelation. Plus, in Italy, it was everywhere. That part of the trip, at least, was a dream come true.

I still harbor a fondness for Nutella, whether it be banana-Nutella crepes, Nutella gelato, or a simple smear of the spread across a piece of crusty bread. I don't usually keep it in the house (because, honestly, who needs that kind of temptation?), but I spotted a jar leftover from last year's cookie bonanza in the back of my cabinet recently, that never got turned into the Nutella-filled sandwich cookies I had bought it for initially. With its existence floating around in the back of my mind, I decided to put it to good use when I spotted a recipe for Nutella-filled chocolate cookies on one of my favorite recipe blogs. I had all the ingredients on hand (I'd planned on putting hazelnuts in the dough for the sandwich cookies that never got made and had frozen them in the meantime), so I decided to whip up a batch.

As it turns out, stuffing a fairly stiff cookie dough with a substance as fluid as Nutella is a tricky proposition. Suffice it to say, I made a huge mess and had to wash my hands after every two cookies I formed. These were not cookies that were easy to throw together, and after all that work, I was a little bummed that I only had 18 of them to show for my effort. I can see why each cookie had to be so large -- it would have been difficult to get the dough to wrap around the filling with less, but ultimately I felt that the Nutella filling to cookie ratio was a little too heavily skewed in the cookie's favor. They were still popular, especially with Justin and my coworkers, but I would have liked them better with more straight-up Nutella. 

If you're a Nutella fan, and you have a high tolerance for messes in your kitchen, by all means, give these a try. When it comes to chocolate cookies though, I think I'll be sticking to my tried-and-true chocolate brownie cookies, even if they don't have the same aura of European cool about them.

Nutella Dream Cookies

adapted from Serious Eats

2 c. plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 c. sugar

1 c. unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 c. roughly chopped hazelnuts

1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 c. Nutella

1. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about three minutes. Beat in eggs. Add cocoa powder and mix until fully incorporated.

3. Gradually add in the flour mixture and beat until just combined. Stir in the hazelnuts and chocolate chips by hand.

4. Divide the dough into 18 equal pieces, and roll into balls. Press a large indentation into the center of each, and fill with 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of Nutella. Crimp the dough on top to seal in the Nutella filling and roll gently between your palms to recreate a round shape. Cover dough and refrigerate one hour.

5. Preheat the oven to 350.

6. Bake the cookies on parchment-lined sheets for 15 minutes, or until cookies appear dry and cracked on the surface.