MUCH healthier than normal Nutella! I wouldn’t store this in the fridge, it’ll get eaten pretty quickly anyway! Make sure you adjust the cacao quantity if you are making this for children. i bought my coconut palm sugar and raw cacao in Holland & Barrett, but they are an Irish make that supervalu now stock too and are reasonably priced, the hazelnuts came from Tesco, two packets of their own brand.

Quantity:

Makes enough to fill 1 big Jar or 2 small jars.

Cost:

Approx €5.00

Ingredients:

• 400g Hazelnuts- Natural, with their skins on
• 4 Tbsp Raw Cacao **if you don’t like dark chocolate or are making this for kids, 3 Tbsp might be enough**
• 3 Tbsp Coconut Palm Sugar
• 2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• A pinch of salt

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180c
2. Lay the hazelnuts on an oven tray and toast for approx. 25 minutes, until they are golden- shake them regularly during cooking.
3. Remove from the oven and remove the skins by wrapping the nuts into an old clean tea towel and rubbing them against one another (see pic above)
4. When the skins are removed, carefully remove the bare nuts from the tea towel and discard the skins (I just threw away the tea towel too, life’s too short).  You will get some stubborn nuts that refuse to take their coats off, it’s fine if a few of them still have the skin on, let them in anyway, a few won’t do any harm. You need the majority of them to be in the nip though, or your Nutella will not be smooth
5. Put the nuts into the food processor, you want to do all of this quite quickly so that the nuts are still hot/warm when you process them, they will turn to butter much quicker, as the oils in the nuts are still warm.
6. Keep processing until you have a very smooth runny butter, you will need to scrape the mixture from the edges a few times. This should take a max of about 5 minutes.
7. Add to the food processor (with the nut butter): Cacao, coconut palm sugar, vanilla and the pinch of salt. Blitz for a few minutes until very smooth. **if you are making this for children. Just add 3 Tbsp of cacao initially and then taste it, the 4^th might make this a bit bitter for children, use your own judgement**
8. Taste to make sure its sweet enough for you, add a bit more sugar if not.
9. Decant into a jar
10. Scrape excess from the food processor using a spatula and eat it!