How to make Chocolate Hazelnut Spread – Vegan

Chocolate and hazelnut spread is a quite brilliant combination of hazelnuts and chocolate. It has so many uses from drizzling onto ice cream, adding to overnight oats, or smoothies. It’s quite like store-bought Nutella as it’s similar in flavour and texture but this is even more flavoursome. Its way better. The flavour is much more chocolatey. Make some for yourself and see if you agree with me. It is so easy to make you’ll wonder why you haven’t tried it before.

Why you want this spread in your life

• it’s creamy
• it’s spreadable
• it’s wonderfully chocolatey and nutty
• it’s simple and quick to make
• it’s versatile with so many uses

It never lasts very long in my house. It’s simple to make with only a very few steps and uses all natural ingredients. A not quite so guilty pleasure?

What’s in your Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

• hazelnuts – wonderful little nut that the squirrels constantly steal from my garden.
• chocolate – I tend to use dark chocolate but milk chocolate will work just as well. The final colour of the spread will be lighter and it will be sweeter. You may wish to taste the spread before adding the sugar and reduce the amount if necessary,
• sunflower oil – this is a neutral tasting oil that helps to keep the spread soft, as once the spread is made it will become a little firmer as it cools.
• cocoa – this just intensifies the chocolatey-ness of the spread and makes it completely awesome.
• salt and vanilla – these are both present as flavour enhancers.

How to make your Spread

Begin by toasting the hazelnuts for around 7 minutes keeping a close watch on them so that they don’t burn. If you’ve used hazelnuts with skin on, it is easy to remove them by wrappping the nuts in a clean tea-towel and rubbing them between the cloth layers.

The next step probably takes the most time as you now need to blend the hazelnuts until it forms a soft, fluid nut butter. It will smell amazing but it does take time… just be patient. It passes through stages of crumbed nuts, to nutty clumps and then finally a really liquid hazelnut butter.

Once that has happened, add the rest of the ingredients and blend again to combine everything.

Suddenly, you have luscious, chocolate spread. Check that it is sweet enough for you and if it isn’t, add a little more icing sugar. Blend again and check again. Once you’re happy with it pour into a jar and allow it cook before adding a lid.

What can I use Chocolate Hazelnut spread for?

This spread is so versatile; as a sweet topping on toast, drizzled over pancakes or crepes and goes brilliantly with bananas. Try it as a sauce on vanilla ice cream… that’s particularly wonderful. Bake it into doughnuts, swirl it through porridge, ever just licked it off of the spoon?

You could add Chocolate and Hazelnut spread to this smoothie recipe – Banana, Almond and Oat Smoothie, substitute the almond butter in the recipe for this (2 tablespoons is wonderful), for a delicious alternative.

What changes can I make to the recipe?

There are a few changes you can make to this recipe.

• chocolate – the type of chocolate you use will affect the intensity of the flavour. A darker chocolate, 85% or 90% cocoa solids, for example may mean that you’ll need to increase the amount of icing sugar to adjust sweetness. Using milk chocolate will give a milder flavour and a lighter colour too. I love 70% cocoa, chocolate the most, it gives quite an intense chocolate flavour hit.
• cocoa – you could use cocao in the same amounts without changing the end result much at all. Do not be tempted to use drinking chocolate as this tends to include other ingredients that will affect the final flavour of the spread.
• hazelnuts – you can use hazelnuts with skin-on or blanched (skin-off) without any effect on the end result.

Is this spread gluten-free?

Chocolate Hazelnut Spread is gluten-free, providing that you check the contents of the cocoa powder as not all of these are. It should be stated on the label whether it is gluten-free or not. Labels are your friend.

Is this spread suitable for vegans?

It is, providing that you chose vegan friendly chocolate and make sure that your cocoa powder definitely doesn’t contain any milk powder.

Storing Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Store this spread in a sterilized jar where it will happily keep in a cool dark cupboard for upto 4 weeks. If you keep it in the fridge then it will keep for around 6 weeks. I’m sure it will be long gone by then.

What are you going to use your nutty Chocolate Hazelnut Spread for? Slather it on waffles, bagels, toast or drizzled over wonderous vanilla or strawberry ice cream…. so many options.

Please let me know how you find this recipe – it matters quite a lot to me that you find the recipes on this blog helpful and the results delicious!

If you like this…You may also like this:

• Homemade Peanut Butter
• Delicious Almond Nut Butter
• Easy Creamy Chocolate banana and Oat Smoothie
• Vegan Cream Cheese

Why not Pin this recipe to use later?