Nutella Vanilla Swirl Loaf

Who loves Nutella?  I do, and I hope you all do too!

This Nutella/vanilla swirl loaf is super easy to make - and it's moist, delicious and of course full of (and covered in) Nutella.  I baked this for a family dinner and it was very well received.

It's quick and simple so this is one to keep in your repertoire and whip up when you're in a bind!

Recipe adapted from: Taming Twins
Ingredients - 11 x 21 cm (4 x 8 inch) loaf
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
225g flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g Nutella

Ingredients - topping
100g Nutella
75g hazelnuts

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 160C (320F).

2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating in between additions.  Mix in the vanilla essence.

4. Fold the flour and baking powder into the mixture gently.

5. Take one third of the batter out of the bowl and set aside.  With the remaining two thirds, add the 200g Nutella and mix until smooth and combined.

6. Line a 22 x 12cm loaf tin with baking paper.

7. Pour the vanilla batter into your lined loaf tin, try and keep it on one side of the tin.  Then pour the Nutella batter onto the other side and swirl them around with a knife.  Don't swirl too much because you don't want the colours to get too muddy and messy.

8. Bake the cake for about 50-60 minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs.  While the cake is baking, you can toast your hazelnuts in a frying pan to give them more flavour and crunch!

9. When your cake's done, let it cool in the tin.

10. When cool, place your cake on a serving plate and spread the 100g Nutella over the top.  If your Nutella's a bit stiff, microwave it for a few seconds in a microwave safe bowl to make it a bit more runny.

11. Roughly chop the hazelnuts and sprinkle them over the top.

Enjoy!

Mini Hazelnut Macaroon Stacks

I had some leftover egg whites so I whipped up some hazelnut macaroons and stacked them up with some melted chocolate.  It was awesome.

Recipe adapted from: Smitten Kitchen
Ingredients
113g hazelnut meal
75g white sugar
Pinch of salt
2 egg whites
2 tsp white sugar (for beating with egg whites)

+ any filling you desire!  I used melted dark chocolate and peanut butter.

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 160C (325F).

2. In a small food processor, process the hazelnut meal, 75g sugar and salt until finely ground.  I skipped this step when I made them, which is why you see defined hazelnutty bits in my mixture.

3. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

4. Add the 2 tsp white sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.

5. Gently fold half of the nut mixture into the eggs until combined, then repeat with the remainder of the nut mixture until the batter is smooth and everything is incorporated.

6. Line your baking trays with baking paper or silicone mats.  Place the batter into a piping bag with a plain round tip and pipe into circles about 6cm in diameter.

7. Bake the macaroons for 15 - 20 minutes, until lightly golden and dry to the touch.

8. Let the macaroons cool, then carefully peel them off the baking paper/silicone mats and sandwich them together with your desired filling.  I suggest chocolate, ganache, jam, peanut butter or Nutella!

Chocolate Hazelnut Sandies

Chocolate Hazelnut Sandies are lovely little shortbread-like biscuits, great for snacking!

Recipe Adapted From: Daydreamer Desserts
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups hazelnuts
1/4 cup icing sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
170g butter
1 egg yolk

Method
1. Roast your hazelnuts in a frying pan by tossing them over medium heat.  You'll know they're done when they start to smell delicious and they've gone a bit brown in places.

2. Process the hazelnuts, icing sugar, brown sugar and cocoa powder in a food processor until the nuts are ground.  (For some strange reason, there was no cocoa in my house when I made these, so I chucked some chocolate chunks in instead!)

3. Add flour and salt, pulse until combined.

4. Chop the butter into chunks.  Add the chunks to the food processor and blend until the dough resembles sand.  Remember, your mixture will look a lot darker than mine is due to the lack of cocoa!

5. Add the egg yolk while the processor is running and blend until the dough forms a ball.

6. Divide the dough in half and roll each half into logs.  Make your logs whatever size you want your cookies to be in the end!

7. Wrap the logs in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours (I find that overnight is easiest).

8. When you're ready to bake the biscuits, preheat your oven to 160 C (325 F).

9. Slice the dough into cookies about the height of the side of your fingers and bake for about 17 minutes.  If you want, you can place a piece of hazelnut on the tops of the cookies before you bake them.

10. After the cookies are baked, let them cool on a tray for a bit before transferring to a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Praline Paste

If you have never tried praline paste, now is the time to make some of your own and become enlightened.

Praline paste is quite simple - it's made from nuts, toffee and, if you really want (I really wanted), chocolate.  Commercially produced praline paste is completely smooth but when homemade it turns out with tiny bits of roasted nuts and toffee.  It still tastes like heaven.  Delicious, chocolatey, nutty heaven.  Think Nutella.  But better.

Recipe Adapted From: Joe Pastry
Ingredients
225g white sugar
50g water
225g hazelnuts (you can substitute half the hazelnuts for almonds, but I think that hazelnuts taste much better)
(optional) about 2 oz dark chocolate

Method
1. Make sure that your nuts are peeled!  If you didn't get blanched hazelnuts, take a look at this post about how to peel hazelnuts.

2. Roast the nuts, either in the oven on grill setting, or in a frypan, until lightly browned.  They should start to smell delicious and look a bit oily as their natural oils seep out.  When they're done, set them aside to cool.

3. Arrange the nuts on a silicone sheet or a sheet of baking paper on a tray in preparation to pour the toffee on top.

4.. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water and heat until the mixture turns a light golden/amber colour.  If you want a bit more bite to your praline, heat until a darker colour, but I prefer it lighter.  This should take quite a while, about five minutes or so, but keep watching it!

If you're using a heavy-based saucepan, keep in mind that the toffee will keep cooking as  you are pouring it over the nuts and can end up tasting a bit burnt - so make sure that the toffee is of a lighter colour if you're using a saucepan that retains a lot of heat.

5. Quickly pour the toffee over the nuts.

This was our first attempt at the praline - the toffee was a bit too burnt, as you can see from the dark colour.

On our second attempt, we were more careful with the toffee and hence it is a lighter colour and tasted much better!

6. Wait for the praline to harden.  If you're impatient, place an ice pack underneath the tray that the praline is on.

7. Once hard, break the praline into small chunks and place in a food processor.

You can either break the praline by hand, or you can place the chunks in two freezer bags (for added strength, because the bags break quite easily) and bash them a bit with a rolling pin or the flat of a hammer.

8. Blitz in the food processor until the praline becomes liquid-like and smooth.  This might take a while, depending on the strength of your processor!  Don't be afraid to really blast it, though.

This is the consistency that you want your paste to be - nice and liquid so that it levels itself out.

9. If you want to add chocolate, add it now.  The praline paste should be quite hot so if you're using small enough bits (chocolate chip sized), you can just chuck the chocolate in and process until combined.  Alternatively, melt the chocolate first and then blitz to mix.

10. Decant the praline paste into a jar (or your mouth) and enjoy on a spoon, on a cake or even on your bread!

How To Peel Nuts

It is often that recipes call for peeled/de-skinned nuts.  Blanched almonds can be found easily in supermarkets, but I've found that blanched hazelnuts are more difficult to find.  I've tried the good old method of roasting the nuts then rubbing the skins off with a tea towel, but I found that this method left quite a lot of skin still on the nuts.  Thankfully, there is an easier way.

Enter water and bicarb soda!

This blanching process is super easy, not overly time consuming, and the results are great.

Recipe Adapted From: My Baking Addiction

Ingredients

2 cups water

2-3 tbsp bicarb soda

Approx 230g hazelnuts or almonds

Method

1. Combine the water and bicarb soda and bring to a boil in a saucepan.

2. Add the nuts.  The mixture should foam.  If the froth threatens to overflow, just lift the pan off the stove for a bit until it goes down.  Warning - mixing does not help!

3. After about four/five minutes, tip the nuts into a colander and run under cold water.

4. Using your fingers, peel the nuts.  The skin should slough off easily, but some may require a bit of picking.  (Almonds are much, much easier to peel - the skins come off in one chunk without any problems.  Hazelnuts are a bit more difficult.)

5. Once the nuts are peeled, dry them with paper towels or a tea towel.

It's best to roast the nuts to remove some of the moisture absorbed in the blanching process.  I found that the best result was achieved when the nuts were baked in the oven at about 200 C for five minutes or so and then toasted under the grill.

Molten Chocolate Babycakes, and the joy that is Gianduja

Gianduja is a truly delicious substance made of hazelnut (or another nut) paste and chocolate - you may know it as hazelnut praline.  It melts like chocolate and acts rather like chocolate in baking, too, as I discovered in my little forays in substituting it into recipes.  Its taste is reminiscent of Nutella and expensive chocolates, i.e. mouthwatering.

It can also be used for decoration, in different forms depending on how you cut it.  It can go into chunks or shavings, but if you're careful you can coax it into curls.

One of the things I used the gianduja for was Molten Chocolate Babycakes, a delightful and completely chocolatey recipe from James McNair via a Nigella Lawson cookbook.  The recipe uses chocolate but I substituted about half the chocolate for gianduja and it gave the babycakes a lovely hazelnut-chocolatey (Nutella-y, gianduja-y) taste.  The babycakes are equally as good with just chocolate, mind you.

Recipe Adapted From: How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

Molten Chocolate Babycakes

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter/margarine, plus extra for greasing

350g good quality dark chocolate

150g caster sugar

4 large eggs

1 pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g plain flour

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C/392 F.  If you're making the babycakes in advance (they can be refrigerated as batter, because it's best to eat them right after they've been baked) then don't heat the oven until closer to the serving time.

2. Grease six large cupcake/muffin moulds or about 12 smaller ones with butter.  Make sure there's adequate greasing because, if not, the babycakes will stick.

3. Melt the chocolate and set it aside to cool.

4. Cream the butter and sugar.

5. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and add a pinch of salt, then the vanilla.

6. Stir in the flour, then the cooled chocolate, blending it into a smooth batter.

7. Divide the batter between the moulds.  If you take too long to do this, the batter will begin to harden and then it just gets annoying, so keep that in mind!

8. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes (make sure you bake them for the whole 12 minutes if the babycakes have been in the fridge)

9. Once removed from the oven, upturn the moulds onto plates and serve with ice cream or cream (the babycakes are very rich!)

When cut open, the babycakes should be molten and gooey and warm on the inside.

Perfect!

Chewy Hazelnut Chocolate Blondies with Nutella - World Nutella Day

There are many unspoken taboos in my household.  Nutella is one of them.


Unfortunately, I love Nutella.  I've got a whole pile of recipes that use the delicious hazelnut-chocolate spread stashed away, begging to be baked, but I have been unable to answer their pleas.

UNTIL NOW.  Yesterday, the 5th of February 2011, I celebrated World Nutella Day.  (Seriously, who comes up with these days of celebration?  Whoever they are, they're awesome.  I praise you for bringing Nutella to my life.)
Mum was browsing through Foodgawker, came across a promising recipe and learnt of World Nutella Day.  When she told me about it, I asked when it was.
"The 5th of Feb," she said.  I looked at my diary.  OMG IT'S TODAY.  Abandoning my plan to watch The Parent Trap on TV, I rushed to the supermarket to buy Nutella with Mum's blessing.


Here's what I made: chewy hazelnut chocolate blondies.  Nutella Blondies for short.  With some suggestions from Mum, I made my first major adjustments to a recipe and I am pleased to say that these blondies came out amazingly.  Chewy, dense, hazelnutty, chocolatey, slightly crunchy and (most importantly) covered in Nutella.  Oh yes.

Recipe Adapted From: Cooking Canuck
Ingredients (21 x 31 cm (8 x 12 inch) brownie tin)
105g flour
100g hazelnut meal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (omit if using salted butter or salted margarine)
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (it shouldn't matter if you don't add this)
150g butter/margarine
100g Nutella
170g brown sugar
230g white sugar
2 eggs
3 cups rolled oats
60g hazelnuts
80g chocolate chips


For the topping:
Lots of Nutella.  I didn't weigh it, I just piled it on and spread it.  Yeah, I'm so precise, I know.
60g hazelnuts
60g choc chips


Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C/350 degrees F.  Line a 21 x 31 cm (8 x 12 inch) baking tin with baking paper.


2. Whisk together flour, hazelnut meal, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.  Set aside.

3. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar, white sugar and Nutella until light and fluffy.


4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

5. Add the flour mixture gradually, in about 3 lots, mixing between additions.

6. Roughly chop the hazelnuts.

7. Mix in the rolled oats, chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts into the batter.

8. Pour the mixture into the baking tin and flatten with a spatula or spoon.

9. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes.  The top of the blondies should be golden brown, but the middle shouldn't be dry.  You want to keep the blondies moist and chewy.


10. Let cool in the pan then lift the blondies out to cool completely.


11. Now you need to prepare the topping.  Using a food processor, process the chocolate chips (60g) until there are some in chunks and some completely grated 'dust'.  Add the hazelnuts and process until the hazelnuts are in rough chunks.  Don't process for too long!

12. Spread Nutella onto the top of the blondies using a knife.  The thickness of the topping is up to you!

13. Sprinkle the ground hazelnuts and chocolate onto the top of the Nutella and press down lightly so they stick.  Make sure all the Nutella is covered.

I mainly devised this topping so that the blondies wouldn't stick to each other when I put them into the box.  It worked.  Genius plan!


14. Chop the big blondie bar into squares or rectangles or whatever shape you want, really.  I chopped them into large squares but Mum sneakily made them into smaller rectangles when I wasn't looking.

15.  Eat.

Happy Nutella Day!