Langue de chat are one of my favorite cookies to eat. If you ever had a Milano before, it’s basically like that. Thin, melt-in-the-mouth cookies sandwiching a filling, usually chocolate-based. In this case, I went with a chocolate-hazelnut langue de chat. I love Nutella, and often get jars of it from Germany whenever we go for the Christmas markets. So I already correlate Nutella with the holidays to begin with, and just to give you another option for cookies to gift Santa, figured, why not make some Nutella-based cookies this year? In this case, I went with the langue de chat, since they are such a perfect blank canvas cookie to feature a fun filling. In this case, a Nutella ganache! For the cookies themselves, I also ground up some hazelnuts and made the batter with those included, just to add more hazelnut flavor – chocolate can be overpowering, and I really wanted these to be proper chocolate-hazelnut cookies. My way of guaranteeing that: add more hazelnut flavor where I can! If you want, for a more mature-tasting filling, you can also add some frangelico(no more than 1 tbsp) to the ganache, which will temper down the sweetness and add even more hazelnut flavor throughout as well! I will warn you, this recipe does take time to make. The cookies being made from a batter requires some resting time prior to baking to minimize any shrinkage risk. The ganache filling needs to be frozen solid, otherwise attempting to assemble these will be a sloppy mess. However, with patience comes good things, and the same totally applies to these cookies – they’re definitely one bribe you can give Santa to stay on his good list this year!

Makes 24 sandwich cookies:
For the chocolate ganache:
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup chocolate chips(highly recommend using Valrhona’s Azelia chocolate)
1/4 cup Nutella
a pinch of salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup heavy cream

In a pot, heat up your milk, chocolate, Nutella, salt, and butter. Once everything is fully melted together, take the mixture off heat and stir in the heavy cream. Spread the ganache into square stencils and freeze the ganache solid before unmolding. Keep the ganache frozen for assembly.

For the hazelnut tuile batter
1 tsp ground hazelnut
1 1/2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp brown butter, cooled down to room temperature
1 egg white
a pinch of salt

In a bowl, whisk everything together to form your tuile batter. Refrigerate the batter for 1 hour. Over a lined sheet tray, spread the batter into square stencils. Bake the batter at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool before sandwiching with the ganache squares.