Nutella Madness and a homemade recipe

One of the many foods that I have had a long love affair with is Nutella. As a kid, I used to eat Nutella by the bottles. In those days, Nutella was sold in tall patterned glass tumblers. In fact, once washed, these tumblers became nice glasses. Everyone used to wonder where we bought our drinking glasses from!

Nutella, these days, doesn't come in those nice tumblers anymore, otherwise I would have a nice collection of glasses! However, my parents still have a large stock of these tumblers that always brings back fond memories of my younger days gobbling up Nutella.

Now one thing I've learnt is that this world can be a rather fascinating place. Who would have thought that my food blogging would one day lead me to find a fellow foodie and web friend who has links to the makers of Nutella?

Yes! It's true! I now have a friend who has a connection (albeit unproven but yet highly likely) to the Ferrero family who are the makers of Nutella as well as Ferrero Rocher. How cool is that! How did this happen? Well, said friend, Dolores, used to leave comments on my blog and one day I noticed her surname - Ferrero. I jokingly asked her if she was related to the chocolate spread makers and the answer was 'most probably' and she gave me this link to her blog Culinary Curiosity to read up on which I reproduce for you.

That was rather exciting. I also learnt that tic-tacs are made by Ferrero too. Never knew that. Bet you didn't either. Now you do. And so do I!

Anyway, since I ove Nutella so much, I decided to troll the web and look for a homemade recipe for Nutella. Did I mention that I was going to buy this HUGE manufacturing plant, modify it and retrofit it so that it can manufacture Nutella and put Ferrero out of business?

Yeah, Yeah I jest. But it would be a fun thing to do!

Anyway, ignoring my little aside, I found that there were a number of different recipes available ranging from using butter to cream but the one that seemed most 'genuine' was this recipe below.

Strangely enough there are two people that claim credit to it and since the recipes are so remarkably similar, I credit them both.
Stephanie Gallagher of healthycooking.suite101 and
Jessica Su of Sugoodsweets.com

Homemade Nutella Recipe
2 cups chopped hazelnuts
3/4 cup to 1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder
1/8 to 1/4 cup canola oil
Place hazelnuts in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until nuts start to clump together in a ball. This will take some time (about five minutes), so be patient. Add the powdered sugar and cocoa powder and process again for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture turns dark and the ingredients are well combined. Now, slowly drizzle in enough oil to make a spread.
Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 4 to 6 weeks.


I halved the recipe and I roasted the hazelnuts in the oven first and peeled off the skins. Then I processed the nuts till the oils started to come out. I must admit that my food processor is a little old and so the nuts didn't grind up as fine as I would have liked. No matter. I added in the sugar and the cocoa as per the recipe but found that more sugar and cocoa was required to get it more like the authentic Nutella taste.



I couldn't wait to try it and neither could my daughter. She loves Nutella too. So we both slathered it on thick on to slices of bread and munched away.


It was good. Vey good! Aside from the spread being a little grainy
due to the nuts not being ground well enough, the taste was definitely Nutella!! Yes, yes, definitely not as good as the original but a darn good home recipe nonetheless. I also realised that its cheaper to buy Nutella than to make the homemade version simply because Hazelnuts are expensive over here and I could buy a jar of Nutella for the same price as just the hazelnuts.

It was fun being able to make my own Nutella though and I'm going to keep this recipe just in case I end up some place where I cant get my supply of Nutella.

Now I wonder what I can make in that new manufacturing plant of mine......(One can dream right?!!)