Christmas Pudding NY Style Cookies

It’s that beautiful time of the year Christmas is almost here. Let’s make these incredibly delicious chocolate cookies, inspired by a traditional Christmas Pudding. They’re super easy to make and even easier to get addicted to!

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Now what you describe as a ‘perfect cookie’ comes down to personal preferences, I’d say I prefer a gooey, chunky cookie that’s soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. If you agree this recipe is perfect for you.

To make perfect Christmas Pudding New York Style cookies it’s important that you use the right ingredients. I have tried and tested many cookie recipes/methods and using the right quantities and ingredients will impact the way your cookies turn out.

Let's get into the recipe…

Cookie Filling

Step 1- Prepare the cookie filling. 

For this recipe, I used Nutella because it is one of my favourite chocolate spreads. However, feel free to use any other spread. For example, you could try using Biscoff spread, chocolate orange spread or even white chocolate spread. It’s entirely up to you.

To prepare the Nutella blobs I use 2 teaspoons and scooped up 12 small blobs and placed them on a plate. I then placed the plate in the freezer to chill. Freezing the Nutella makes filling the cookies so much easier because the spread will be easier to handle as it won’t stick to your hands.  

Making the Cookie Dough

Step 2- In a large bowl mix the butter ad sugar together.

This recipe requires COLD unsalted butter, which I sliced up into small cubes (they don’t have to be perfectly even). The reason we use cold butter cubes is that when the cookies spread in the oven the cookies will form beautiful cracks on top and create the classic New York Cookie Style. 

The recipe uses two types of sugars, soft light brown sugar and caster sugar. For the perfect cookie, I’d definitely recommend using a 50:50 sugar ratio for creating the perfect cookie. Avoid using Granulated and Demerara sugar because the grain size is a lot thicker in comparison to caster sugar and light brown sugar which is finer. The reason we want to use fine sugar is that the recipe doesn’t require a lot of mixing which means we won’t be giving the sugar a lot of time to dissolve. If you do use granulated sugar you might find your cookies turn out a little more crunchy and grainy in texture so keep that in mind.

Adding the Chocolate

Step 3- Next it's time to add the chocolate and mix until evenly distributed.

I used a combination of milk and dark chocolate. You can use either chocolate chips or you could chop chocolate bars into small chunks. If you choose to use chocolate chunks make sure the chunks aren’t too big as it will make preparing the cookie dough balls a little difficult later on.

Preparing The Dry Ingredients 

Step 4- In a large bowl whisk together all of the dry ingredients.

I like to mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl because it will ensure all of the baking agents and salt are equally combined. One time I made cookies but added the salt in last and because the cookie dough gets a little bit difficult to mix the salt wasn’t evenly mixed so I ended up with a few salty cookies.

Adding the Dry Ingredients

Step 5- Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, then mix until evenly distributed. Then add the eggs and mix until the cookie dough starts to clump together.

During this stage the mixture might be a little bit difficult to mix if you are using a wooden spoon, to fix this issue I used food-safe gloves and continued to mix with my hands until the dough started to clump together. 

The cookie dough is quite crumbly so don’t panic if you're dough isn’t clumping together, just continue squishing the cookie dough until it just about clumps together.

If you think your cookie dough is too dry you can add an extra egg yolk.

Assembling The Cookie Dough 

Step 6- Using a measuring scale weigh out 125 grams of cookie dough. Then fill the dough with Nutella.

If you want to get a perfectly even cookie I’d recommend using a scale. However, you can just roughly estimate the amount of cookie dough you want if you prefer. 

Once you have weighed out 125 grams clump the dough roughly together, then push a small hole in the centre of the dough. Place one blob of Nutella into the centre of the dough then cover the Nutella by squishing the cookie dough over it. Don’t worry about making each cookie perfectly round.

Step 7- Once you have made up all of the cookies. Place them in the freezer to chill for a least 2 hours or overnight for best results.

Baking the cookies

Step 8- Preheat the oven to 170C Fan. Then place a lined baking tray in the oven.

A great tip if you want the bottoms of your cookies to be lovely and crispy is to place a line baking tray in the oven and allow it to heat up before placing the cookies onto the tray.

Step 9- Place the cookies on the hot tray and bake for 15-17minutes.

Make sure you leave enough room for the cookies to spread. Once the cookies have been baked leave them to cool on the tray as they will continue to bake further.

Don’t try to remove the cookies from the tray as soon as they come out of the oven because they will still be soft and fragile.

Decorating The Cookies

Once the cookies have cooled it’s time to decorate them. To create the Christmas pudding look, I used leftover white royal icing from my gingerbread man recipe. However, you can use melted white Chocolate if you prefer. Once you add the white icing place 1 Christmas holly sugar decoration on each cookie.