Gianduiotto

A hazelnut and chocolate paste set in an ingot shape, with no added cocoa butter.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 300 g hazelnuts
• 200 g dark chocolate, 60 per cent
• 150 g icing sugar
• 20 g cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Roast the hazelnuts at 170C for 12 minutes, then rub them in a cloth to get the skins off. Skins left on make the paste bitter and gritty.
2. Blitz them, warm, for a full 10 minutes, scraping down often. They go from crumbs to paste to a loose butter as their own oil comes out, and stopping at crumbs is the commonest mistake.
3. Melt the chocolate to 45C, then stir it into the hazelnut butter with the sugar, cocoa and salt.
4. THE NUT OIL IS THE ONLY FAT ADDED. Piedmont made these with hazelnut because cocoa was scarce, and that is why the texture is soft and short rather than snapping like a plain chocolate.
5. Cool the mixture to 28C, stirring, until it thickens to a pipeable paste.
6. Pipe it into the ingot shape — a long triangular prism — on paper, or into moulds, and refrigerate 2 hours.
7. Keep them cool. Without added cocoa butter they soften in the hand faster than a chocolate does.

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.

Filed under Italy · All recipes