Back when I was in high school, one of the recipes I made that was surprisingly well-received by my classmates was a Nutella crostata. I say surprisingly because when I came up with this recipe, it was mostly out of boredom. I still remember this because a classmate who really went out of his way to be critical about my desserts even liked it. Why did I bake for my classmates, you may wonder? Mostly because I found that if I ate all of my baked goods, I would become morbidly obese, so if I gifted them off to my classmates, then they can deal with gaining that weight instead of me. Yeah, these are the issues of a compulsive baker who’s only joy in life back then was to see what crazy and fun desserts he could make when he should have been studying harder for his classes that he really could not care less about. That bizarre and kind of depressing tangent into my adolescence aside, that was all to say that these crostata are delicious. When it came to conceptualizing the dessert itself, I had Nutella lying around, I had been experimenting with making souffles out of things by folding whipped egg whites through them and baking them, and figured, why not bake a Nutella souffle into a tart crust? The end result was a soft, brownie-like filling enrobed in a butter, flaky pie dough. It had all of the right textures and flavors for a really fulfilling and rich dessert.

I wanted to pay homage to that high school Fred recipe, by doing a rendition with a few changes. The main one being the dough I am using for the crostata. Crostata is an open-faced pie or tart dough, where the dough is rolled out into a circle, and usually folded around a filling and baked. It is also called a galette in a French kitchen, but I like calling it a crostata, which is the Italian term, since that was how I was introduced to it. I wanted to amp up the chocolate-hazelnut flavor throughout the dessert, so unlike the original version of this I made back in high school, which was a plain shortbread dough, I ground up hazelnuts into a flour, and used that, along with black cacao and creme di cacao(chocolate liquor) to make the dough distinctly chocolate-hazelnut flavored. For the filling, it is a mixture of melted chocolate and Nutella, with whipped egg whites folded through it to give the final product a brownie-like texture. It is cakey and almost melts in the mouth, but has a mildly crackly top. I also put hazelnuts on top of the crust, some drizzled dark chocolate, and no Italian dessert would be complete without being caked in confectioner’s sugar, so that went in there as well – I made sure to account for that additional sugar by taking out the additional sugar in the filling, and instead relying on just the sugar in the Nutella and the dark chocolate to stabilize and sweeten the filling. As tacky as powdered sugar on a dessert is, it really does fit the aesthetic for these crostata, and so long as there is a way to remove some sugar in the dessert itself for it, then everything will still be in balance!

Makes 2 5-inch crostatas:
For the chocolate dough:
1 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp creme di cacao
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup hazelnut flour
2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp black cacao powder

In a bowl, whip the butter, sugar, egg yolk, and creme di cacao until combined. Fold into that the other ingredients to form a dough. Refrigerate the dough for 10-20 minutes.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough and cut out two 6-inch rounds, rerolling the dough as necessary. Place the rounds on a lined sheet tray.

For the filling:
2oz Nutella
1oz melted dark chocolate
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg white, whipped stiff

In a bowl, mix together the Nutella, chocolate, salt, and vanilla until combined. Fold into that the egg white to form a loose batter. Pour the batter between the two 6-inch rounds of the dough and fold the dough up, around the edges.

For garnish:
1 egg
hazelnuts
dark chocolate
confectioner’s sugar

Beat the egg with a fork, and brush the sides of the dough and place hazelnuts on top. Bake the dough at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes. Melt some dark chocolate and drizzle the chocolate on top of each crostata. Dust the sides with the confectioner’s sugar to finish.