Nutella

My comment about the sacrifice I made to eat the leftover Nutella cheesecake has prompted questions about whether I make my own Nutella spread. The answer is yes. It is not necessarily cheaper to make, as with many other kitchen staples, but it is much healthier and easy to make.

The main ingredients of store purchased Nutella are sugar and palm oil, with added emulsifiers and milk solids, and only 13% hazelnuts.

Homemade Nutella (Chocolate Hazelnut spread) has over 50% hazelnuts, no palm oil, emulsifiers or milk solids. This makes it a healthier option and suitable for vegans.

The recipe I use comes from Nagi at Recipe Tin Eats - Homemade Nutella

Ingredients

• 250g/8 oz raw skinless hazelnuts (Note 1)

• 1/4 cup/30g Dutch processed unsweetened cocoa powder (Note 2)

• 3/4 cup/90g icing sugar/confectionery sugar

• 2 tbsp hazelnut oil (or vegetable, canola, grapeseed, or other neutral flavoured oil)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°c

2. Place hazelnuts on a baking tray, roast for 8 minutes or until golden.

3. Transfer into the blender and blend on the lowest speed until the nuts are ground into a crumb. Scrape down the sides as necessary. Then increase the speed to 4 until it turns into a paste. You may need to scrape down the sides a few times. Then increase the speed as high as it will go and whizz until it becomes smooth with a consistency like honey.

4. Add the cocoa, icing sugar, oil and vanilla essence, then whizz, starting on low and increasing to high. Whizz until smooth - the sugar takes the longest to dissolve (Note 3).

5. Pour into a jar - it will be lovely and warm. Allow to cool to spread consistency. Do not refrigerate as the sugar will crystallise and it will become grainy.

Notes

1. If you can't find peeled hazelnuts, just use hazelnuts with the skin on. Roast them, then place them in a bowl and put another bowl on top. Shake vigorously to loosen the skin, then separate the nuts from the skin. Don't worry if there is some skin, it will whizz up smooth. You just want to remove most of the skin because it can be a bit bitter.

2. Dutch processed cocoa powder is darker and has a more intense flavour than normal cocoa powder. You can use a dark cocoa powder (which is darker than normal cocoa but slightly lighter than Dutch processed) but the Nutella won't be quite the same colour and the chocolate flavour is a slightly less (not that much, it affects colour more than taste).

3. It takes around 2 - 3 minutes in a Vitamix which is a high performance blender, so it may take longer in other blenders. If you don't own a blender, you can use a food processor.

I am unable to show you a picture of my homemade Nutella as I used the last of my stock in the cheesecake.

Nagi has a great video demonstrating the process with a bonus hazelnut hot chocolate at the end to reward yourself for all the hard work (not that hard).

Homemade Nutella Video