It's Christmas today and of cause I've had time to cook both traditional and less traditional sweets. This year, I experimented with Nutella -- not something I buy very often, but was inspired by all the American Nutella recipes on Pinterest -- and came up with this, a version of the peanut chocolate recipe. I see it as a tastier version of ischoklad. We used to do ischoklad every christmas when we were kids, but I never really liked it when I got older.
This recipe has the same soft, melting character as ischoklad, but with more flavour and a less buttery feeling. If you want to avoid transfats and palm oil, you can use homemade Nutella, but not having tried it myself I can't say if the texture will be the same. There are several recipes for it online, just google "homemade nutella" and see which recipe you prefer. One simple recipe for chocolate hazelnut butter can be found here.
This recipe lists the exact ingredients I used, but you can use whatever chocolate you prefer -- certainly no need to use both dark and milk chocolate. You probably want to avoid sweet chocolate as the Nutella is already packed with sugar. Unless it's for kids who wouldn't mind a mild, sweet chocolate taste.
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Nutella chocolate
100-125 gram Nutella (or other brand of chocolate hazelnut spread)
125 gram dark chocolate 55-60 %
25 gram milk chocolate 36 %
½-¾ dl roasted and skinned hazelnuts (optional)
1. Chop the chocolate.
2. In a heat-resistant bowl, melt the Nutella and chocolate in a waterbath on the stovetop or in the microwave oven. Stir well to completely mix the ingredients.
3. Pour into mini muffin cups or ischoklad cups.
4. Add a couple of hazelnut to each cup if you want. You can also add the nuts to the chocolate before pouring it in cups if you prefer that (in that case, you might want to chop up the hazelnuts a bit first).
Store cool in an air-tight container.
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Note: Hazelnuts can be roasted in a skillet on the stovetop or in a pan in the oven. Mine were roasted at 225 °C (437 °F) 5-10 minutes, stirring a few times during the process. Rub the cooled nuts with a towel to remove the skins. Roasted hazelnuts have a fuller taste and you don't get the slightly bitter off-flavour of the skins.
That has to taste the best! Nutella the choclate of the Gods! Happy Holidays!
ReplyDeleteHappy holidays to you too! Yes, in my mind this is a good fusion: you get the nut-and-chocolate flavour of nutella, but less sweet and more "managable" than a soft spread if you want to eat it as a treat.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I'm not a huge fan of Nutella. My favourite hazelnut-chocolate spread are the ones that are part brown and part creamy beige. (And I never use it on bread like e.g. the germans -- eat it directly from the jar or bake with it.)