I first saw a recipe for homemade Nutella on Leite’s Culinaria at the start of the year. What a great idea! Like many people, I have such a soft spot for Nutella; it features in childhood memories, when I would sometimes get a Nutella sandwich or Nutella on tea biscuits as a treat. As an adult, I had mascarpone and Nutella ice cream in Italy, on a balmy June evening. One of the top ice cream moments of all time. I’ve also used Nutella in baking, to make these gianduia brownies.
Other brands of chocolate spread are available, of course, with varying degrees of deliciousness.
I finally got round to making my own Nutella – or Notella, if you will – just last month. I swapped plain chocolate for the milk chocolate, to make something a bit more sophisticated and less sweet, but otherwise I more or less followed the recipe on LC. I converted one cup of hazelnuts to 150g, and 12 ounces of chocolate to 300g – I figured those amount were close enough, and fit in well with the packet sizes of hazelnuts and chocolate, respectively. The end result really is the Nutella you know and love, but a bit thicker at room temperature – I found it needed a little warming up to make it spreadable. You can use it in any way you use the real thing, which by the way includes pressing it into service as an icing and filling for cakes.
It’s a slightly time consuming process, mainly due to the opening stages of toasting, skinning and cooling the hazelnuts, so you’d be forgiven for asking why you’d bother when you can buy Nutella right off the shelf and ready to use. If you’re asking that question, this recipe probably isn’t for you. There are some of us who want to do it just so that we can say we did, just to try to recreate something in our own kitchens. You can also be sure of exactly what’s in your chocolate hazelnut spread if you make it yourself – there are no added preservatives and you can make sure the chocolate and cocoa are Fair Trade, for example. You can also make the spread chunky or smooth, as you prefer, and toy with the sweetness by adding an extra pinch of salt along the way.
Start with melted chocolate and skinned, toasted hazelnuts
Blend the hazelnuts to a paste with a few other ingredients
Add the melted chocolate
Homemade Nutella!
This was just the starting point in my Notella experiments – I have an even more exciting recipe to share with you on Wednesday, which was inspired by this one but, if you ask me, surpassed it. I look forward to posting it!
September 10th, 2012 at 12:18 PM
Wishes I could eat chocolate. I might change the migraine just to eat all of this nom.
September 11th, 2012 at 1:35 PM
Well if you’re going to give yourself a migraine, you better be sure it’s worth it! Do you eat any chocolate substitutes or just tough it out?
September 12th, 2012 at 5:46 AM
Ignore my cut incomplete comment.. (sorry) I wanted to write that black sesame paste with honey had some chocolate+ nut flavor and no choco at all in it. Unlike cocoa, that doesn’t prevent me from sleeping.
September 22nd, 2012 at 3:52 PM
Black sesame paste and honey sounds amazing, too. Thank you for both comments, you come up with the best ideas
September 10th, 2012 at 12:40 PM
I LOVE making my own nutella – it is delicious!
September 11th, 2012 at 1:35 PM
Isn’t it? I look forward to experimenting with different recipes
September 10th, 2012 at 6:07 PM
Oh man! This is totally going on my to-do list for the weekend.
I’d already intended making hazelnut butter, so why not just keep going? Looking forward to your ideas of what to do next.
September 11th, 2012 at 1:35 PM
Dae it! Wednesday’s post is pretty exciting, if I do say so myself. Love the sound of hazelnut butter.
September 11th, 2012 at 10:15 PM
I prefer it to peanut butter these days- though my food processor is getting so old that I feel guilty for forcing it to blend the nuts for so long! But it’s delicious.
And yes, I’m definitely making the nutella this weekend.
September 12th, 2012 at 4:35 AM
Wow- it looks way creamier than I would have thought. Yum!
September 22nd, 2012 at 3:50 PM
It really is, I thought that there would have to be milk but NO! The nuts do all the work. That sounds weird.
September 12th, 2012 at 6:05 AM
The looks delicious. You have a real giangujia, not a vulgar nutestuff. . You can also try with other nuts. I like the coconut version.
September 22nd, 2012 at 3:51 PM
Coconut – now that is an excellent idea!
September 12th, 2012 at 9:07 AM
Wow, you are so ambitious you are always trying the very difficult recipes and this one I have a sweet tooth for. I am nuts about nutella and I am afraid if I made this I would I would gain 10 kg in a week. I sure loved reading your recipe. Take care, BAM
September 22nd, 2012 at 3:52 PM
What a nice comment! I really appreciate that, I always say that things aren’t difficult, just time consuming, but perhaps sometimes I am kidding myself
I did eat a lot of Nutella sandwiches after I made this stuff…