Saturday 15 September 2012

Homemade Nutella

Who doesn't love Nutella, right?  Lawsuit aside, based on the number of Nutella-based recipes on Pinterest, brand loyalty is pretty strong.  But after reading Michael Pollan's book "In Defence of Food", I started reading labels more.  And although there weren't many words that my grandmother wouldn't recognise on the ingredient list, Nutella seemed to contain too much sugar for me to purchase another jar.

So when I saw this recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Butter in Chatelaine last winter, I clipped and filed the page (the old-fashioned way) for a weekend project one day.

It's a very simple recipe: hazelnuts, semi-sweet chocolate and honey.  Roast the hazelnuts, melt the chocolate, add the honey and chop, mix, blend it all together.

Except that it didn't really work.  It never got creamy.  Oh, and I didn't have semi-sweet chocolate squares on hand, so I used dark chocolate instead.   I thought it tasted good, but the consistency was wrong, and it wasn't sweet enough for my girls.

It stayed in the fridge for a couple of days, until (as suggested by my sister), I blended it again with some oil.  And I added some maple syrup to try to sweeten it some more.

Much better!  It tasted scrumptious and wholesome on my croissant this morning.  

But the girls still don't like it.  I'll try again.  But next time I'll use semi-sweet chocolate, more honey, and oil right from the start.  They're bound to like it eventually, right?  Maybe after 12 tries...

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