Exquisite Hazelnut Chocolate Spread Recipe

I invite you to prepare your Nutella (which some people love excessively) with a much better taste and which will make you think Nutella is a bad joke of the food industry. This recipe is easy to make, apart from making dry caramel, all you have to do is pressing the blender button. Still, it will take you an hour of work. At the same time, you will have learned 4 techniques: dry caramel, praline, hazelnut paste and Gianduja. This recipe is more balanced and tasty, but unfortunately, it contains as many calories as the Nutella (530 kcal / 100 g)! The chocolate hazelnut spread is excellent and of superior quality. Guaranteed success among gourmets. Everything is detailed so that you succeed on the first try.

• 135 g entire hazelnuts,
• 55 g blond cane caster sugar,
• 70 g blond cane sugar to be ground into icing sugar (about 45 seconds in a blender/chopper),
• 70 g milk chocolate with 40% cocoa,
• 12 g full-fat milk powder,
• 5 g bitter cocoa powder,
• 3 to 6 g oil neutral in taste (grape seeds, rapeseed, sunflower). With 6 g, the paste will be softer to spread when taken out of the fridge. You will decide the amount at the end of the mixing according to its fluidity.
• 1 g salt (a big pinch).

Equipment:

• a blender/chopper with a double blade,
• a small saucepan with a thick bottom,
• baking paper,
• a small grill or a clean cloth,
• a silicone rubber spatula (otherwise it will melt on contact with the burning caramel).

Course of the recipe:

The jar and lid are sterilized with boiling water filled to the brim.

Roast the hazelnuts. Drop them on a metal baking tray or a pie tin or a grid, and put in the oven for 10 to 12 minutes at 180° (convection oven) or 170° (fan-assisted oven), just enough time to colour the skin dark brown and start roasting the hazelnut. Then, to remove their skin, roll them on a small rack or rub them in a clean cloth. With this operation, you will lose 10 g of material. There will be 125 g of hazelnuts left, which we will divide into two portions of 55 and 70 g.

Roasting hazelnuts

Dry caramel making. Pour 55 g of caster sugar into a thick-bottomed saucepan (the thick bottom is important otherwise the sugar will burn on the edges of the saucepan). Heat over medium/hot (7/10) or even hot (8/10) for the first minute, the sugar will start to melt after 2-3 minutes at 160-170°. During the operation, do not touch the pan, never stir it, let it melt without interfering. Then lower the heat to medium or medium-low (4 to 5/10) to take advantage of the thermal inertia and finish melting without burning the caramel. For the last remaining grains, give the pan small rotational movements to help them melt. Without waiting, using a rubber spatula, pour the caramel on the baking paper to obtain a thin layer. It must be poured quickly because it cools and hardens fast on contact with the warm edges of the pan. The colour of the caramel should not be too dark, otherwise it will be bitter and you will have to start again. Once the caramel has cooled, break it into small pieces.

Dry caramel

Cooled dry caramel

Then, mix the caramel in pieces with 55 g of roasted hazelnuts until you obtain a very shiny paste. The paste should be shiny when the oil starts to ooze. Mix for 2 to 4 minutes, long enough for the dough to become smooth and fluid (not pasty), without any lumps. Do not hesitate to stop mixing every 30 seconds to scrape the edges of the bowl with a spoon and put the paste back in the centre to achieve a good homogeneous mix. At the beginning of mixing, we get a powder, which is the dry praline. After several minutes, the paste is ready, this is the wet praline. Remove the praline from the blender and set it aside in a bowl.

Praline

Add the 70 g of the remaining roasted hazelnuts and 70 g of icing sugar to the blender. Blend until you obtain a shiny, smooth dough when the oil begins to ooze. Blend with the same insistence as for the praline for 2 to 4 minutes. The hazelnut paste has just been made.

Hazelnut paste

Melt the 70 g of milk chocolate in a bain-marie or microwave for 3 minutes at 350 W and add it to the hazelnut paste, and now add the salt. Blend again for 1 minute, we have just prepared some Gianduja milk hazelnuts.

Finally, add the praline paste that has been set aside, milk powder, oil and bitter cocoa powder to the bowl of the blender and blend again for 1 to 3 minutes.

Gianduja milk hazelnuts

Last blend

The longer you mix, the more fluid the paste will become. Don't hesitate to check the consistency of the mixes at each stage and, above all, keep in mind that the dough is hot during mixing and therefore more fluid than it will actually be once it has cooled to room temperature or when it comes out of the refrigerator. The oil that comes out of the hazelnuts and the melted chocolate will freeze as it cools.

Pour the mixture into the sterilized jar. Once the jar has cooled to room temperature, keep it in the refrigerator for 24 hours so that it takes on the consistency of a spread. Also, the flavours will have had time to develop and mix well, which will be better. The paste will remain hard when it is at room temperature. The jar of spread can be stored at room temperature for one month in a cool place. It can be stored for 3 months in the refrigerator in the vegetable or egg container, the least cool compartment, so that it is still a little soft.

after Christophe Michalak.