Banana Chocolate Chunk Nutella Filled Cookies!

My friend Lisa recently gifted me a giant jar of Nutella, which I always associated with Europe and my semester abroad, so I don't know a lot of uses for it. I'm not one to take a spoon to the jar and eat it by the spoonful - but I have liked it melted over ice cream. I've been meaning to try out making nutella cookies, which sounded like they would be good - I set to looking for what seemed like a good recipe and everything that was popping up seemed a little boring. Combine that with a way over ripened banana I threw in the freezer earlier that week and some pumpkin pie puree I had leftover from my Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal - and this was the result!

Banana Chocolate Chunk Nutella Filled Cookies (makes 24 good size cookies)
1 stick butter (1/2 cup), at room temp
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 banana, mashed
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup pumpkin pie puree/filling

2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
dash of cinnamon
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks
Nutella!

1. In a large bowl, beat the butter (at room temp or microwaved a bit) and brown sugar together until well mixed.

2. Add the egg and beat on high for a minute - you'll notice it gain some volume. Then add the banana and vanilla and mix again. Then you can add the last wet ingredient - the pumpkin puree, and mix together.

3. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and white sugar.

4. Gradually add the wet to the dry ingredients.

5. After just mixed, add in the chocolate chunks and mix together with a wooden spoon, not with the electric mixer.

6. I think it helps to refrigerate the dough before putting it onto the cookie sheets - it helps to firm up the dough a bit.

7. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. On a nonstick baking pan, spoon out about a TB of dough and make an imprint into the dough with your slightly wet fingers (will help the dough not stick to your hands), which you'll fill with about a tsp of nutella!

Then you'll cover the nutella with more cookie dough, using a spoon to sort of spread the top dough around so the nutella isn't showing too much. Mine didn't really spill out at all which surprised me so don't worry about making a big mess on your cookie sheet.

8. Bake for 10-12 mins and enjoy every single morsel! As you see here to the left the cookies really puff up and spread out so make sure you space the dough out enough.

These cookies do well in the freezer so feel free to throw the extras in the freezer and just take them out before dinner in order for them to be thawed in time for dessert!