Homemade "Nutella" Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

This was a big hit at my Holiday parties, spread on apple slices and/or crispy buckwheat pancakes*!
(*Make small buckwheat pancakes, then spread them on a cookie sheet & dry them in a 200F oven until crisp. Makes a great gluten-free cracker for savory or sweet toppings!)

I adapted this recipe from here, as I didn't have hazelnut oil, and I won't touch agave nectar.

1 cup hazelnuts

¼ cup cacao powder

5 tablespoons honey, maple syrup, palm sugar, or rapadura

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon hazelnut or coconut oil

pinch celtic sea salt

Roast the hazelnuts at 350° for 8-10 minutes until they darken a bit and smell fragrant

Transfer the hazelnuts to a towel and rub off the skins if you can

In a food processor, grind the hazelnuts to a smooth butter, about 5 minutes, scraping the sides as needed

Add the cacao, sugar, vanilla, oil and salt and process until well blended, about a minute

Store in a glass mason jar in the refrigerator

Bring to room temperature prior to serving

Makes 1 ½ cups

I used Grade B maple syrup for the sugar.
I used coconut oil, and had to add a bit more to get a spreadable consistency. 

Instead of roasting the hazelnuts, I had previously soaked and roasted them. 

Enjoy!! 

Cupcakes!

Tomorrow is Husband's birthday! Time to bake!

As I said, I have a new pan that makes rosette-shaped cupcakes. Since last year's cake was the first that really turned out for me, I decided to use the same recipe this year. Husband requested chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Since I don't intend to frost the cupcakes & obscure their shape, I added a cup of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips to the batter, to make it extra chocolatey for him. I checked with Joy of Cooking that any cake batter can be made into cupcakes; bake for 20-25 minutes. This agreed with the instructions that came with the pan. I had also asked the fabulous Heather Solos over at Home Ec 101 for advice on how to grease/flour the cups so that I didn't have flour globs on the rosettes. She advised me to use a bit of the flour/cocoa mix. Since this recipe uses such a *tiny* amount of flour (3/4c coconut flour/1/4c cocoa powder), I made 1/4 cup extra & reserved it for this purpose. The recipe uses coconut oil, which I have vast quantities of, but yesterday I happened upon a can of spray coconut oil, on sale, and decided to splurge on it. Hey, it's a birthday cake! And this isn't an inexpensive recipe, no matter how you slice it. (haha)

First batch seemed perfectly done at 20m. They spent 10m cooling in the pan, then I gave them a gentle massage to be sure they were loose from the sides, inverted a platter on the pan, turned the whole shebang over, and POP!! PERFECT CHOCOLATE ROSE CUPCAKES. I overfilled the second batch's cups because the batter was *almost* done, so it took the extra 5m.

While the first batch were cooling, I tried a couple of decorations, but I think I like them plain best. What do you think?

L-R: Plain; cocoa powder; flaked coconut mixed with powdered sugar; powdered sugar.

It's all I can do to keep from wolfing one down!!! (And then I did. It was DELISH!)

Party followup

So, the Dog Party was a huge success!!

Based on the RSVPs, I was expecting 14 dogs, but only 7 came. It was a good mix, though, so probably all for the best!

Go see photos from the party!

The captions tell the story of the dogs playing. None of the other dogs were as interested in the water as Suki was! But they all had a blast playing together. There are also way too many photos of the food and its preparation, LOL.

As for the foods: Well, the hummus and gazpacho were hits, as you've noticed from the requested recipes I posted.

The fruit purees didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but they weren't bad. I think just plain grapefruit juice would have worked better than trying to use the pulp and juice. Also, Note To Self: before whirling the pulp of three grapefruits in the small food processor, strain it so that the juice is held separately. Otherwise it leads to

The Great Exploding Grapefruit Extravaganza of 2008!!!

Um, yeah. A mess. A HUGE mess.
I saved the remaining berry purees and will probably make ice cream or something with them.

The minted yogurt with cucumber was fantastic, I thought. As noted in previous post, I strained the yogurt to thicken it, mixed in chopped fresh mint, sea salt, and just a tiny bit of ground cumin. If it were a fancy party, I would have put this mixture into a baggie, snipped off the corner, and piped a dollop onto each cucumber round for a fancy hors d'oeuvre. Since it was a casual party, I just put the slices & sauce out for dipping. Another way to serve it would be to chop the cucumber and mix it into the sauce. Then you've basically got Indian Raita or Greek Tzatziki.

Okay this is making me hungry and my dog wants to play, so, enjoy!

Yay Cooking!!

Man, I love throwing parties, because they give me the chance to play with new food ideas!

I'm trying to be gluten-free these days, so I planned the party food around that. I doubt that anyone will notice that anything is missing. Yes, except for those of you who read this and that I've mentioned it to. But you know what I mean.

Last week we went to The Mother Ship, and among all the other stuff we got, I bought a small exotic soda from Italy. It was grapefruit/strawberry. It was WAY too sweet for my taste, but it was an interesting combination. The way I make sodas these days is to take fruit juice and mix it with fizzy water (like Perrier.) So I thought, what if I make grapefruit and strawberry purees and mix with the fizzy? I also bought raspberries for the same purpose. I'll let you know how they come out!

I love apples and cheese, so I bought a log of goat cheese and some Pink Lady apples for that purpose. I'll make hummus and offer tortilla chips and veggies to dip it. I'm also straining some fabulous bulgarian yogurt. I'll mix fresh mint into it, and either mix in cucumber, or offer slices to dip it with. I got some of those great hothouse/english cukes for that. The big job today is to make gazpacho! I've been lamenting the lack of raw veggies in my diet (the enzymes they contain aid digestion) and gazpacho is a great way to get them! It's a lot of work to make, but then you have several days worth of veggies to "drink". I've also got two cantaloupes that should be fabulous, as they are sitting there smelling up my kitchen (in a good way!)

So anyway, it's a lot of light, cold, summery snacks for all the guests at Suki's party tomorrow!

Oh, yeah, I'm not sure who all reads this, but it's possible that someone would read it that wouldn't know - Sunday is Suki's first birthday, so I'm throwing her a party tomorrow evening! There will be something like 14 dogs running around my back yard... Crazy! I have two baby pools and two sprinklers for them to play in, almost 20 tennis balls, and a new HUGE rope toy for them to play with! So, of course all the food I'm making is for the humans who bring the dogs...

Okay. I have to go get in the shower and go to the chiropractor and run errands and get back here and start cooking. Happy Weekend!!