Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Stuffed Sugar Cookies

The Co-op had Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter on sale this past week. If you haven't tried this stuff, you should. It's amazing. It's nothing like the inferior Nutella. It has some texture to it, and has the perfect sweet/salty combination. Since it was on sale, I felt justified in using it in baked goods. Usually I just eat it right off the spoon, but I saw this idea floating around on Pinterest. They were using Nutella, of course, but I new I had to veganize it the second I saw it.
I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe that I found on vegweb.com. I always use ice cream scoops when I make my cookies, something I've learned from my years in food service. They produce the most consistant results. I used two sizes for these cookies, one for the cookie dough, and a baby one for the chocolate hazelnut butter. After I scooped out the cookie dough, I flattened it into rounds and topped it with the scoop of nut butter. I sprinkled the nut butter with a little coarsely ground sea salt.

I gathered the cookie dough up and around the nut butter and rolled them smooth in my hands.
To make them even more delicious, I rolled each cookie in sugar. You could skip this step if you wanted to, but it makes them a little crunchy on the outside and makes them look nicer too.
I baked them for 12-14 minutes, a little longer than called for in the recipe since I was dealing with a much thicker cookie. Let them cool on the pan for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. Enjoy!