Nutty for Nutella

Tomorrow is World Nutella Day. Seriously. It has its own website, Facebook page, and is even registered on the ‘Days of the Year’ website – http://www.nutelladay.com/

 

I only discovered this after ‘Googling’ for information on the world famous spread. Honest. And, without even realising that we were approaching such a significant day (I must have special nutty chocolate sixth-sense powers), I decided to have a crack at making my own. Just before Christmas I declared my love for nuts and nut butters, in particular M&M’s Intense 65% Cacao variety – nuts and dark chocolate, they can do no wrong.

So it comes as no surprise that Nutella also rocks my world. My mountain-goat father leads walks in Norcia in Italy where hazelnuts are produced and brings me back jars of the finest ‘real’ hazelnut and chocolate spread. He is so very kind.

For more nutty facts on Nutella, The Telegraph put together a list of 10 things you might not know about the chocolate-hazelnut spread in celebration of World Nutella Day – have a read here.

Anyway, prior to discovering all this exciting information about Nutella I had decided to use my trusty Nutribullet to make some of my own.

I started with a 200g bag of hazelnuts. I have recently learnt that soaking nuts/seeds/pulses overnight can increase the nutrients available by activating them, and that it also helps to get rid of something called ‘phytic acid’ along with other nasty sounding things. Next time I will do this. You can also roast the hazelnuts so your chocolate-hazelnut spread is even tastier. Giving the nuts a good rub in a tea towel removes the skins, too.

With the milling blade I started the blitzing and the shaking and the blitzing to get the hazelnuts looking like this:

I then added 100g of honey and with the extractor blade blitzed and shook and blitzed and shook the mixture until it looked like this:

I added two tablespoons of unsweetened cacao powder and made sure it was well combined before adding roughly 200ml of semi-skimmed milk, a little at a time, to the mixture. For those who don’t consume dairy products, I am sure almond milk (or an equivalent) will be great.

And then it suddenly looked like this – amazenuts!

So, on World Nutella Day, we may not be consuming a shop brought jar of Nutella, but we will definitely be celebrating the day with a homemade version that I hope would make Mr Pietro Ferrero proud – it definitely tastes pretty scrummy. Buon appetito!