Almond butter makes chocolate cookies moist and fudgy

In her cookbook “My Two Souths,” chef Asha Gomez added an intriguing twist to the classic chocolate cookie — Nutella. It was an innovative way to introduce nutty flavor to an otherwise straightforward chocolate cookie dough.

Inspired, we wondered what other nutty spreads would work, so for this recipe from our book “Milk Street Tuesday Nights,” which limits recipes to 45 minutes or less, we tried natural almond butter. We were thrilled. Besides injecting the cookie with almond flavor, the natural ingredient gave us more control over the finished texture — moist, fudgy and almost brownie-like.

We made a few other small tweaks — adding cocoa powder and semisweet chocolate to deepen the cookie’s flavor and color without overwhelming the lighter milk chocolate — but otherwise kept the recipe simple and straightforward.

Sliced almonds pressed onto the tops added crunch, and a final sprinkle of flaky sea salt heightened the