Just checked: nuget.targets is an msbuild file. And you were on the right way, in:
<DownloadNuGetExe Condition=" '$(DownloadNuGetExe)' == '' ">false</DownloadNuGetExe>
Change the value to true:
<DownloadNuGetExe Condition=" '$(DownloadNuGetExe)' == '' ">true</DownloadNuGetExe>
But you must restart Visual Studio or reload the solution (see comments) after this to take effect.