Chocolate Hazelnut-Almond Butter

If you are a fan of Nutella, you will surely enjoy this recipe!  After many attempts of recreating it, I finally ended up with a recipe I can share with you.  It’s not as smooth as Nutella, but just as enjoyable.  My favorite benefit of this recipe…it has less sugar!  Also, the blend of almonds and hazelnuts in it gives this recipe a wider variety of healthy fats. If you don't have one, I would highly recommend investing in a food processor; it has been one of my best friends in the kitchen.  I use it all the time to make my own almond butter among many other things.  Purchasing nuts in bulk is a great money saving tip if you make your own nut butters like this one.

For this recipe, if you prefer the taste of dark chocolate as opposed to milk chocolate, I would still recommend using half milk & half dark chocolate.  When I tried it with all dark chocolate, the product got too hard at room temperature and was not very spreadable compared to a recipe using part milk chocolate. 

This chocolate spread goes great over a piece of toast, strawberries or any other favorite fruit!  Be careful…it’s easy to eat an entire jar of this if you don’t have very good self-control around chocolate; which I know from experience :)   Enjoy!

Chocolate Hazelnut-Almond Spread:
Ingredients:

• 3 cups dry roasted, unsalted hazelnuts
• 2 cups dry roasted, unsalted almonds
• 2 cups premium* milk chocolate chips (you may substitute 1 cup of dark chocolate if preferred)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract (optional)

*I recommend using a higher-end brand chocolate, like Ghirardelli.  Once I made it with a generic brand chocolate chips and noticed a difference in the taste.

Directions:

For this recipe, you will need a double boiler, food processor, and jars/containers to store the spread in. 
To make the nut butter: Place almonds into a food processor and process until they are smooth and begin to resemble a butter-like texture (look at photos above).  This may take 1-3 minutes, depending on your processor.  Occasionally you may want to scrape & push down the nuts along the sides of the processor.  When the almonds have been processed to a butter-like texture, add the hazelnuts & continue to process until you have a smooth, butter like texture (~1 minute).  The reason you add the hazelnuts in after the almonds is because almonds take longer to process into butter than the hazelnuts do. [Note: hazelnuts are naturally higher in fat/oil than almonds, which is why they turn into 'butter' so quickly.  Also, when I attempted this recipe with only hazelnuts it was too runny; which is why I recommend using a blend of the two nuts.]  While the nut butter is processing, you can start melting the chocolate. 

To melt chocolate: Fill the bottom of double boiler & place on medium-low heat.  Place chocolate chips in to the top pan of a double boiler over the hot water to melt the chocolate.  Make sure to continually stir the chips once they begin to melt (they will look shiny) to ensure even melting.  When the chocolate is fully melted, add it to the food processor with the vanilla extract and process until the mixture is evenly blended.  Remove the chocolate nut butter & pour into clean, dry jars or containers.  

You may can this into jars using a sterile canning procedure if you’d like; but if you plan on eating it in the next couple weeks I would recommend pouring it into a clean, airtight jar or Tupperware container.  This can be stored at room temperature for a couple weeks; or refrigerated if you prefer. Take note that it will harden if it's refrigerated.  This recipe yields about 4 cups of nut butter.