Truth be told, these buttery sandwich cookies with the romantic name had me at “Nutella.”
A culinary Valentine to Italy’s most famous star-crossed lovers, these chocolate-and-vanilla shortbreads are glued together, Oreo style, with a thick and irresistible layer of the addictive chocolate-hazelnut spread. As someone who can (and has) enjoyed entire jars of Nutella by the spoonful, I couldn’t resist taking the recipe for a test drive when I ran across it in Epicurious more than a decade ago.
World Nutella Day on Feb. 5 just happens to fall on my Nutella-loving twin daughters’ birthday, which helped seal the deal.
Another truth: The original recipe, which I’ve made many times over the years, wasn’t so Nutella-y. I’m embarrassed to admit that when I decided to bake the cookies earlier this week as an early birthday present for my kids, I made the rookie mistake of rushing through the recipe without actually reading it from start to finish.