One, if not the best, things that you can put on bread is Nutella. Admitted, it is even better without bread. Just a spoonful of pure smooth hazelnut and chocolate delivered directly into your mouth.
I tried a lot of other hazelnut/chocolate spreads and none could match Nutella. So I was surprised to find an even better spread in a chocolate shop in Venice.
It was so intensely chocolate that it was just unearthly. And made from cacao, hazelnuts and olive oil – fantastic! Further, it was not completely smooth, it did contain small soft pieces, probably hazelnuts. This prompted me to make something similar at home.
I know it is really hard to grind hazelnuts into a completely smooth paste and was therefore relieved to learn that you can have a wonderful spread with some bigger particles. And a genius composition of hazelnuts, cocoa, and olive oil is so simple yet it promised – and delivered – so much!
THE EXPERIMENTS
I decided to use a mortar to mix all the ingredients since I could probably grind the hazelnuts even more and not overheat the whole mass. Overheating is never a good idea, especially with chocolate, since it ruins the taste.
First, some grounded hazelnuts were mixed with cocoa powder. The mixture was dry and the hazelnuts proved to be really hard to mill further. I added some walnut oil to get a compact mixture, but milling improved only slightly. At that point, I decided that reducing hazelnuts particles is not viable with my equipment and I will have to live with what I have. Next, some powdered sugar was added to get something resembling the final product.
It was relatively bitter with a strong taste of walnut oil. Some vanilla sugar and sunflower oil improved the taste significantly. The taste was strongly chocolatey, nicely rounded and full. Completely comparable to the Venice experience and therefore perfect! Exactly the thing I was looking for. But I did not stop there.
For the fans of regular Nutella, I wanted something similar. Not surprisingly, this was easily achieved by adding more powdered sugar and sunflower oil. This way the texture was the same, just the taste of cocoa and hazelnuts was less intense and the whole thing a bit sweeter. Thus it was more suitable for the general taste, just like Nutella.
MY HOMEMADE NUTELLA RECIPES
Dark chocolate/hazelnut spread recipe
- 40 g Ground hazelnuts
- 60 g Cocoa powder
- 30 g Powdered table sugar
- 5 g Powdered vanilla sugar
- 44 g Sunflower oil (15 g can be supplemented with walnut oil or similar)
Mix all the ingredients until they form a smooth mass. Finished. If the mass is too soft, add more powdered sugar. If the mass is too hard, add more oil. Generally, longer mixing improves the taste, so be sure to mix a long long time. Keep in mind, however, that the mixing should be low intensity (no electrical blenders) so that the mass does not overheat, what would ruin the taste.
Chocolate/hazelnut spread (Nutella) recipe
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Dark homemade Nutella 40 g Ground hazelnuts
- 60 g Cocoa powder
- 70 g Powdered table sugar
- 5 g Powdered vanilla sugar
- 54 g Sunflower oil (15 g can be supplemented with walnut oil or similar)
Mix all the ingredients until they form a smooth mass. Finished. If the mass is too soft, add more powdered sugar. If the mass is too hard, add more oil. Generally, longer mixing improves the taste, so don’t be shy and mix really really well. If the taste is still too cocoa/hazelnut like, just add more powdered sugar and oil.
My other chocolate related experiment: chocolate coffee beans
