Hazelnut praline in a bowl

Hazelnut Praline Paste

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Praline consist of caramelized nuts which have been blended into a creamy paste, a kind of nut butter you could call it.

Praline can be used as a filling in chocolates, cakes or as a flavouring for homemade ice cream. You can also use the hazelnut praline to make homemade Nutella – find the recipe for Nutella in the app.

This is a recipe for hazelnut praline, but you can easily substitute the hazelnuts for other nuts such as pecans, almonds, pistachios, cashews or even sesame seeds.

Ingredients

Hazelnut Praline

25 gram Water

80 gram Sugar

120 gram Hazelnuts

Steps

1
Caramelize the nuts

Combine water, sugar and hazelnuts in a saucepan. Set the temperature to 200 °C.

Heat the nuts while stirring, until the sugar is caramelized and the nuts are golden, it takes around 5 minutes.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and spread the nuts on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Leave to cool.

2
Blend the nuts

When the nuts have cooled to almost room temperature, then transfer them to a blender and blend until you get a smooth paste.

When you blend the nuts, they will be chopped up so finely that the oil will separate and the mixture will become smooth. It takes a while to reach that stage. First it becomes a powder, then a thick paste, and finally a more fluid paste.

You have to blend a little, scrape the mixture down, blend again, scrape and so on until the mixture is thin and smooth. It doesn’t take that long, but it does require a little persistence and patience.

Notes

If you want a darker and slightly more bitter flavour in your praline, then set the temperature to 210 °C instead of 200 °C. However, at that temperature it might start to smoke a little.

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