Monday, March 2, 2009

Almond Coffee Nutella

I've felt so free since I discovered that I could make my own nutella at home. It's delicious, it's dairy-free, and it seems healthier. I found the recipe here a few months ago, and have made it several times with much success.
Due to an unfortunate, bleary-ey
ed miscalculation at Noah's, I ended up with 14 dollars worth of slivered almonds (about 10 dollars more than I needed for the recipe) and have been wondering what to do with them.
Answer: Experimental Almond Nutella.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, substituting slivered almonds for whole hazelnuts. I think the results were pretty amazing.





Some things to remember: smaller nuts or crushed nuts require less baking time. Keep an eye on them or you'll end up picking out the really dark brown (read:black) ones. It's not the end of the world. Second: Different nuts in different stages of their lives have different fat contents. You may have to adjust the amount of oil while blending the nuts.



Third: It takes a long time to liquefy nuts. Longer than you think. Long enough to make you think you're going to wreck your blender and wake the entire neighborhood. Like, 15 minutes almost. They have to get hot, and you will have to constantly scrape down the sides of the machine.
I added a tsp of espresso powder after the mixture was well blended (just had a feeling it would go with the slightly burnt nuts) and a tiny bit of the scrapings from inside a vanilla bean.
This is a winner.