2-minute shortcut recipe to homemade Chocolate Hazelnut Butter, otherwise known as Nutella. Also dairy-free, gluten-free, and refined-sugar free!
Make Healthy Vegan Nutella in 2 minutes – shortcut recipe!
I’m sure you have heard of the commercial chocolate hazelnut butter sold as “nutella”, right? So you know how people go wild over it. One rumor I read is that Yale University had to ban it on campus at one point because students were stealing entire jars from the cafeteria.
So it’s popularity is legend, but so is its unhealthiness. That is why, I, like so many before me, have stepped forward to create a healthy version, a vegan version, a wonderful version.
How Healthy is This Nutella Recipe?
How healthy, you ask? Well hazelnuts provide all the benefits of nuts, including protein, fiber and essential minerals. And quality dark chocolate is excellent at boosting metabolism and mood.
And I even added a bit of Maca powder as an option, an adaptogen that has known positive hormone-balancing effects. For women especially it is know to reduce painful cramps, hot flashes, and calm hormone-sparked mood swings.
So we have established this nutella recipe is healthy, but it is also easy, taking only a few minutes.
How is that? Because my recipe does not involve – as most do – the initial step of roasting fresh hazelnuts, and scrubbing them to remove skins, and grinding them to prepare a hazelnut meal for the recipe.
My recipe skips ahead and starts with hazelnut meal or flour, if you prefer to call it that. Just press the recipe-emote-control forward button. So simple, right?
If you have a minute, let me tell you how my mind arrived here.
I, in my true fashion, wanted to make from scratch a healthy version of nutella to use in my 3-ingredient crispy chocolate bark as I promised earlier.
However, I, also in my true fashion, did not have time for that whole palava (thank you for that word Downton Abby), of buying expensive hazelnuts, roasting them for 20 minutes, then working the skins off with a kitchen towel, and then grinding them in a high speed processor or blender to transform them into a hazelnut meal.
And then I stepped in my pantry and spotted a big bag of hazelnut meal sitting on my flour shelf. (Yes, I have an entire shelf of flours; I am a flour collector, haha).
Anyway, the idea sprung into my head to skip the roasting step. I do think it is important that you use a high quality brand and that it is fresh to ensure the best recipe results. Because for this to work, the meal must be blended or processed to a near nut butter. So the flour must not be dried out or the oils won’t emerge in the blending.
The steps are quite simple. Basically I lean toward the throw-all-ingredients-into-a-mini-processer-at-the-same-time approach! Do it my way, and you’ll be dipping your finger spoon into a fresh batch of delicious healthy chocolate hazelnut “nutella” in about 2 minutes..
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Make Healthy Homemade Vegan Nutella in 2-minutes.
A 2-minute shortcut recipe to homemade Chocolate Hazelnut Butter, otherwise known as Nutella. Also dairy-free, gluten-free, and refined-sugar free!
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cup hazelnut meal
- 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup full-fat coconut milk (Do not refrigerate jar; shake before you open so the fat is not separated out)
- 1/8-1/4 cup maple syrup (Start with 1/8 cup and taste-test before adding the rest)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 tbsp maca powder (optional for positive hormone-balancing effects)
- 1 tsp cold brewed coffee (optional, deepens chocolate flavor)
My Equipment
- 1 2-cup pyrex measuring cup
- 4-cup mini-food processor
Instructions
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Pop the hazelnut meal/flour into the food processor or a high speed blender and process until the meal becomes a bit pasty and oily.
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Set a sauce pan of water on to boil with about 2 inches of water in it, and put your chocolate chips in the measuring cup, put the measuring cup into the boiling water. Turn off the stove and continue stirring the chocolate until it melts. Don't let water enter the cup, you are just trying to melt the chocolate.
OR alternatively, just melt the chocolate in a pyrex measuring cup in the microwave for 60 seconds.
Either way, pour in the coconut milk, 1/8 cup of the syrup, vanilla, salt and coffee. Stir so these ingredients are combined with the melted chocolate.
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Add the chocolate mixture to the hazelnut flour blend and process until you have a smooth, creamy nutella. Taste-test here and decide if you need the remaining 1/8 cup maple syrup both for sweetness and texture (some people want their nutella runny; others want it stiffer - you do you!).
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Store your new gorgeous nutella in a covered glass jar in the refrigerator. I have no idea how long it might last; we gobbled up ours in about 3 days.
Dee Dine is the recipe developer and writer behind Green Smoothie Gourmet. She shares her super healthy wholesome recipes on her blog and her Instagram that she feeds her family and friends. She gravitates toward recipes that are fast to create, plant-based, nutritious, easy, and use familiar ingredients. And chocolate is always a good idea! More about Dee.
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