Saturday, March 15, 2008

Homemade Nutella!


I am a nutella fanatic, I can't have a jar in the house or I will eat it by the spoonful if I have nothing to put it on. Now, even though I love the stuff, I can often find it a little sweet (well a lot sweet at times - like by the third serving in 10 minutes). I always thought it would be great to find a less sweet version - and upon my internet wandering on day I ran across a blog that caught my nutella loving attention - Su Goods Sweets. On her blog there were not only one, but Two recipes for making your own Nutella!

My Mother in law has a great yard complete with a hazelnut tree, so instead of going and buying some nuts, I had her send me some nuts from the fall off the tree. She sent me a rather large amount of nuts, and I proceeded to spend the next couple days cracking nuts until I had 2 cups of whole hazelnuts with the skins still on.

I decided to use the second recipe as it had apparently been revamped from the first one to cut down on the chalky taste of the powdered sugar.

My first attempt at making the caramel sugar didn't turn out so well, as I wasn't sure how dark a "medium amber" was supposed to be. The second time I made the caramel sugar I broke out the new candy thermometer and took the sugar to "hard crack" at about 300F. This worked perfectly.

The nutella turned out great, less sweet than the brand name stuff and more nutty. Everyone who has tried it loves it!

Thanks to Jessica for the fantastic recipe!

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