Buon Nutella Day!

It's here, it's finally here! The day you've all been waiting for!

I hope you all found a way to participate in our global celebration of that chocolatey, hazelnutty goodness known as Nutella.

Being a co-host made me feel that the pressure was on to come up with something really special. Now, I don't really like to cook, but I do enjoy me some baking every once in a while. So I got as culinarily creative as I could possibly muster and decided to combine an Italian favorite, ravioli, with Nutella. Here's the result. Hope you like it!

Nutella Ravioli

Ingredients and materials:

"Pasta frolla," frozen pastry dough (or make it yourself if you're a foodie. I cheated.)
Nutella
Cookie cutters or ravioli shapers
Flour
Cookie sheet, rolling pin, board or countertop for rolling out dough

Here's the how-to:

Pre-heat the oven to 425°F (about 220°C).
Let the pastry dough thaw for about 2 hours, then roll out to about 1/4" (about 1/2 centimeter) thickness.

I found these really cool things for ravioli. On one side it's like a cookie cutter, so I cut the circular shapes into the dough.

Then you pop the shapes out of the dough and place them on top of the cutter. Don't forget to spread on the Nutella---it's the secret ingredient and our ravioli filling! And don't be skimpy about it. The only thing I'd do differently next time is I would add more Nutella. I only did a light spreading on each because I wasn't sure how much to put in.

Once you've spread all that Nutella goodness on, you simply fold the shaper in half, and voila!

A bowl of Nutella ravioli ready to bake.

Now, if you can't find one of these little ravioli doo-dads, just cut shapes out with a large round cookie cutter and fold them up, pressing the sides down to seal. Use light dustings of flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, etc.

I baked them for about 10-15 minutes on a cookie sheet covered in "carta forno" (oven paper, something they use here in Italy to prevent food from sticking. You might need to grease and flour the cookie sheet.) They came out pretty good, I have to say. Of course, Italian "pasta frolla" is a bit dry and not so sweet; I would have preferred a softer, more sugary cookie, but these were definitely traditional Italian dry biscotti. I dusted on a bit of powdered sugar and that helped. Alessandro loved them though. Italians tend to prefer things that aren't on sugar overload; I always hear from my Italian friends that the desserts I make are "good, but too sweet." These go great with a cappuccino for breakfast.

Stop back tomorrow and I'll have a splendid round-up for you of many Nutella Day participants and their creations. And don't worry if you missed Nutella Day. You can still post and email us at: nutelladay (AT) nutelladay (DOT) com, and we'll add your post to our round-up. But hurry! This offer ends soon!