About the Recipe
The Perfect Homemade Christmas gift ! You can never go wrong with gifting food !!!
Gianduja is a paste of dried fruits (hazelnuts, almonds, cashew nuts, etc.) to which chocolate, dark or milk (vegan for us), is added according to taste. It is notably used in the composition of homemade spreads. But if I offer you the hazelnut gianduja recipe today, you're starting to know me, it's because I have gourmet projects! And not just spreads...
Did you know that Gianduja exist because of us French or more exactly the emperor Napoleon, he imposed what we called the Continental System, in 1806, preventing British goods from entering European ports under French control, putting a strain on cocoa supplies. A chocolatier in Turin named Michele Prochet extended the little chocolate he had left by mixing it with hazelnuts from the Langhe hills south of Turin, the famous Piemontese hazelnuts. The resulting confection was named "gianduja" after the well-known character from la commedia dell'arte.
SWEET
Ingredients
200g Hazelnuts
160g Icing Sugar
200g Vegan Dark Chocolate
1 pinch of salt
Chocolate and Gianduja bites:
100g Vegan Dark Chocolate
50g Crushed Hazelnuts
gianduja rosette:
50g Almonds
1tbsp orgeat syrup
25g Sugar
1tbsp vanilla sugar
Preparation
Gianduja
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Toast the hazelnuts in a roasting tray for 6 minutes, or until lightly golden.
Remove to a food processor and blitz to your desired consistency – I like a little bit of crunch but it’s up to you whether to go smooth or chunky.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water (bain-marie), stirring occasionally.
Once smooth, the icing sugar, and the salt Easy! Then add the dark chocolate
Pour the gianduja into a flat-bottomed container that you put in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
Chocolate and Gianduja bites
Put half of the gianduja in a pocket with an 8 mm plain tip and the other half in a pocket fitted with a fluted tip on the side
Make strips the length of a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing them 1 cm apart. Leave to freeze for a good hour.
Cut 5 cm sticks. Put them in the freezer.
Meanwhile, melt 2/3 of the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water (bain-marie), stirring occasionally. Once it’s almost melted add the remaining 1/3 of chocolate mix until it’s all melted then add the crushed Hazelnuts.
Take your gianduja out of the freezer.
Dip the cylinders of gianduja in the hazelnut chocolate then, using a fork, drain them and slide them onto a sheet of parchment paper.
Let set before eating
gianduja rosette
ALMONDS WITH CRYSTAL SUGAR:
Bake the almonds for about ten minutes at I60°C in the oven.
Mix the almonds with a little syrup; add the granulated sugar and the vanilla sugar, mix everything well (the almonds must be coated with sugar, which must not melt).
So put the minimum of syrup...
Bake at 180°C, stirring from time to time, but delicately, so that the sugar does not come out of the almonds.
MOUNTING AND FINISHING THE CHOCOLATE:
Fill a pocket fitted with a fluted nozzle with gianduja and pipe small rosettes on a sheet of parchment paper or on a sheet of plastic.
Place a cooled crystallized almond in the middle of the rosette...
Let them air dry for a day before putting them away.
The crystallized almonds can also be eaten like that, gifted for Christmas or put in your advent Calendar!!!
ENJOY!!!
