Variations on a Hazelnut Butter

I picked up raw hazelnuts on sale today with the intent to make nut butter. I usually make raw or roasted nut and seed butters with no extra flavors, but hazelnut isn't my favorite on it's own, so I dressed it up. I'll start out with pictorial instructions on how to make roasted hazelnut butter and finish with recipes for Maple Vanilla Hazelnut Butter and Chocolate Hazelnut Spread using the homemade nut butter. 

Roasted Hazelnut Butter

Preheat oven to 350F. Spread 2 cups of raw hazelnuts on an ungreased cookie sheet. Roast for 10-15 minutes, stirring once.

Now you'll have roasted hazelnuts with a lot of skin. The skins can make your butter a little rough, so  you'll want to remove some of them. Dump the still-warm hazelnuts onto a clean kitchen towel. 

Gather the edges of the towel so you have a bundle, then rub and knead the hazelnuts. The friction will remove some of the skins. It's okay to have some skin, so don't worry about removing it all.

Remove the hazelnuts from the towel. This is what you'll have left over - a lot of extra skins that don't need to be in your nut butter. Toss those skins in your compost and move on.

Put the nuts in a food processor. Since I was making two different spreads, I only put in one cup per batch. 

Start processing. Your initial phase gives a nut powder. This is where you would stop if you wanted to make nut flour for a recipe. We want butter, so we'll keep going.

After processing some more, the nut flour will start to clump and stick to the sides. Scrape down the sides as needed and keep processing.

Here the oils are starting to break out of the nuts. You'll have to scrape down the sides more often at this point.

 

Getting close, now. It's now holding together as a nut butter, but it's still a bit chunky. Scrape the sides and process just a little more.

Finished hazelnut butter. You can add a little salt if you want and pulse to mix, or make one of the variations below if you'd like something sweeter. Spoon it into a container and store in the refrigerator. 

Maple Vanilla Hazelnut Butter and Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Maple Vanilla Hazelnut Butter

1 cup roasted hazelnut butter
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Pulse all ingredients in a food processor. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Makes 1 cup.


Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

1 cup roasted hazelnut butter
2 tsp coconut oil
2 Tbsp sugar or maple syrup
1 Tbsp cocoa powder

Pulse all ingredients in a food processor. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Makes 1 cup. This may be a little on the runny side, but the coconut oil will help it firm up to be spreadable once refrigerated.