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Praline

Caramelised nuts ground in short bursts and stopped before the oil comes out, because five seconds past that it is a paste.

Vegan.

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS GROUND IN SHORT BURSTS AND STOPPED BEFORE THE OIL COMES OUT. Caramelised nuts go through three stages in a processor: rubble, then a dry sandy powder, then -- within about five seconds -- a loose oily paste as the nut fat is released. The powder is what a cake or a cream wants. Pulse, look, pulse again. Run it continuously and you get the paste on the first attempt, and there is no going back.
  2. BOTH ARE USEFUL AND THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE, so it is worth knowing which you are after before you start. Powder for scattering, folding and crusting. Paste for flavouring a cream or a ganache.
  3. THE NUTS GO INTO THE CARAMEL WARM AND DRY. Toasted first and still warm, they do not cool the caramel enough to seize it. Straight from a cold cupboard they chill it into lumps around each nut.
  4. AND THE CARAMEL IS TAKEN DARK. Pale, the praline tastes of nothing but sugar; a deep amber is where the bitterness that makes it interesting comes from. It will keep darkening off the heat, so it comes off a shade early.
  5. Nuts spread on a tray and toasted at 180C for 10 minutes, until the hazelnut skins crack. Rubbed in a cloth to lose most of the skins. KEPT WARM.
  6. Sugar and water in a heavy pan over a medium heat, swirled but not stirred once it dissolves.
  7. Taken to a deep amber, watching rather than timing.
  8. Off the heat, the warm nuts and salt tipped in and stirred quickly to coat.
  9. Poured onto an oiled tray or baking paper and spread thin with the back of a spoon. It sets in about 10 minutes.
  10. Broken into pieces once completely cold. Warm, it will gum the blade.
  11. FOR POWDER: pulsed in 2-second bursts, the bowl looked into after each, and stopped while it is dry and sandy.
  12. FOR PASTE: kept going 2 to 3 minutes past the powder stage, scraping down, until it runs.
  13. Powder keeps a month in a jar; it goes sticky if the kitchen is damp, so an airtight one. Paste keeps three months.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

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