No workshop session… so I made Nuts and Chocolate spread

They said lockdown

Well… Current time is a bit weird. I had to cancel all my workshop sessions in April and maybe in May… So during that time, I work on new cosmetics formuations and I cook a lot for my crew. This weekend was the Nuts&Chocolate spread. And everybody enjoys.. maybe not the scale..

So today, let’s share a gorgeous recipe : Nuts and Chocolate Spread, by the French chief Christophe Michalak.

Nuts and Chocolate Spread

For  750g of paste
270g whole hazelnuts (the best hazelnuts are those from Piedmont)
120g caster sugar
150g icing sugar
150g milk chocolate with 40% cocoa or more if you love chocolate
25g milk powder (whole for me)
10g bitter cocoa powder
10g 5g grape seed (or sunflower) oil (with 5g the dough will not be liquid)
3g of fine salt

Equipment
1 robot with a knife (robot-cutter)
1 small saucepan with thick bottom
1 bake paper
1 sieve or a clean cloth
1 maryse.

 

1-  The Nuts. Start by roasting the hazelnuts. For that you have to put them on a metal plate, and leave them 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 °. The hazelnuts should be almost black and roasted to the core. Then, in order to remove their skin, it is enough to roll them well inside a sieve, or, failing that, a clean cloth.

2-  The caramel. In a small saucepan, make a dry caramel. The pan should be thick-bottomed, otherwise the caramel will burn at the edges. To make the caramel dry, you have to add in three times the 120g of powdered sugar, over a fairly high heat (but not too strong either!).
We put 40g, we wait for it to melt, we put 40g, we wait … WE NEVER MIX !! At the end, we give rotational movements to the pan to help the last 40g to melt, then immediately remove the pan from the heat, add half of the 3g of salt, and with the help of a maryse, we immediately pour this caramel on a baking paper, in order to obtain a fairly fine layer.
It should not be too dark, otherwise it will be bitter. The caramel will harden fairly quickly. Then break this caramel leaf into small pieces.

3-  The praline. Mix it with 120g of roasted hazelnuts, until you get a semi-liquid paste. And there you go, you have made praline.

4-  The Hazelnut paste. Then, remove this praline from the tank of your robot, and now add the remaining 150g of hazelnuts and the 150g of icing sugar. Mix until a fairly compact dough is obtained: it is the hazelnut paste.

5-  Melt the 150g of milk chocolate in the microwave for 3 minutes at 400W. or in a pan.

6-  Add them to the hazelnut paste, as well as the rest of the salt, and mix again.

7- Then, add the praline, milk powder, oil and cocoa, finally mix again.

You will see that at the start the mixture is quite compact, but the more you mix the more it will become liquid. I followed Michalak’s recipe which said to mix 5mn, but in the end my dough was a little too liquid, as you can see in the photos. Next time I will mix less and I will have the ideal consistency. So pay attention to the consistency, as it liquefies quite quickly.

Here the original text, in French

Take care and stay safe at home.