Hello Again !

So, I became incredibly discouraged with blogging over the holidays and decided to give up. It felt weird just talking to myself. But I'm bored and back.
A few weeks ago I bought about three cups of hazelnuts with the intention of making the hazelnut cupcakes from VCTOW. Today, as I was cleaning out my designated "weird vegan stuff" cupboard in my parents kitchen I stumbled upon those long forgotten hazelnuts and decided that they must be put to use, immediatly ! I had no Mori-Nu or cupcake liners (shame!), so hazelnut cupcakes were clearly out the question. I couldn't think of anything else creative and quick to do with hazelnuts, so I decided on making a vegan version of Nutella. While in Europe this summer I was really, really dissapointed that Nutella wasn't vegan, as it was often the only condiment served with breakfast. I'm pretty sure there's a recipe for vegan Nutella in the 'Nom, but I lent my copy to one of my fathers friends a few weeks back. So, I decided just to make a recipe up!

Ingredients

2 cups of hazelnuts
1 cup of powdered (icing sugar)
1/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
1 tsp of vanilla
some veggie oil


1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts on a baking pan and toast for about 15 minutes, or until the skins are allllmost black.

2. Once the hazelnuts are roasted, place in a clean kitchen towel (or youy mother brand new bathroom towels, as seen here), and rub, rub, rub until almost all of the skins are removed.



3. Place hazelnuts in a food processor, preferably one younger than yourself, and pulse ! At first the nuts will turn into a fine grind, but don't stop here ! Eventually the friction between the baldes and the nuts will make all of the yummy oils come out and it will become paste like.



4. Add icing sugar, vanilla and melted chips into your processor. Drizzle oil into the processor until the mixture becomes a peanut-buttery consistency. Yummm !





I can't wait to spread this on some crepes this weekend !! Mmmm !!

After making the hazelnut paste, I became aware of how similar to nut butters it was and how easy it would be to make homemade nut butters. Look for some yummy cashew butter soon !?