Homemade Nutella

I've honestly never really eaten Nutella, save for maybe once inside of a crepe-like pastry but I've just never wanted to spread chocolate hazelnut onto my morning toast.  I think deep down inside though, I've just been afraid that if I buy the stuff, I'll get addicted to it and end up broke, homeless and walking around pastry shops in the Lower Mainland looking for my next Nutella fix.  So why am I making this stuff?  I don't know.  It just looks good and I thought maybe I could use it in some other recipes...  Alright, and we're off!

The recipe looks like it needs peel hazelnuts but I cannot, for the love of god, find any hazelnuts that come pre-peeled.  To the Google machine!  So I stumble across this blog that had the same problem so it looks like there's some prep work ahead of me to peel these things.  Already I tire of this recipe and recipes within recipes.  This homemade nutella better be worth it!

Peeling Hazelnuts

Ok, now onto the main recipe!

I looked at several different recipes and they were all very different - who knew making homemade nutella could be so diverse?  The only things they had in common were that the hazelnuts were toasted so definitely do that.  Other than that, I'm just gonna wing it and let you guys know what I used.

Tools needed:
Food processor (I guess you could hand process but it'll take a REALLY REALLY LONG time)
Double boiler or saucepan and glass bowl combo
Spatula

Ingredients:

• 1 cup toasted hazelnuts
• 1 1/8 cup or approx. 255 g of dark chocolate (you could use milk chocolate but there's more sugar coming and it doesn't taste as well with the hazelnuts)
• 1 can condensed milk (I have the 14 oz but any amount around that is ok)
• Optional: 1 tsp vanilla (the real stuff, not the extract)
• Optional: 2 tbsp of oil (olive, coconut or canola if you don't have the other two)
• Optional: 1/2 cup hot milk (use whatever you have - coconut, almond, 2%, etc)
• Optional: 1-3 tablespoons of honey depending on how sweet you want it
• *this is not a "stick to the recipe" kind of recipe - adjust the amount of chocolate and sugar to your liking

Directions:
1.  Take cool roasted hazelnuts and put them into food processor.  Process them until smooth in texture (no lumps please!) - Congratulations, you've just made hazelnut butter!  Add in oil here for a smoother consistency or vanilla if you want a bit of vanilla taste.

2.  Bring water to a boil in a double boiler or in a sauce pan where the glass bowl can sit into it without touching the water or the bottom of the saucepan (essentially creating your own double boiler).  Once water is boiled, melt chocolate in the glass bowl - be careful not to overheat or else it will develop lumps and burn!
3.  One chocolate melted, stir in condensed milk and mix together

4.  Add chocolate milk mixture to the hazelnut butter and process together
5.  Add as much hot milk as you need to get the consistency you want - if you like a thicker/denser spread, then add little to none and if you want it thinner/runnier, then add until you get the spread that you like.  I added about 1/4 cup to get a thicker spread and closer to what the real Nutella is like but you can add more or else to your preference
6.  Eat and enjoy!

(recipe adapted from the The Eccentric Cook)