BEHOLD! The Icecream Machine!

For my birthday Spencer got me a fancy new Cuisinart Icecream maker. My first try was some strawberry sorbet. I had found some super cheap strawberries at the Italian Market and it was a simple enough recipe. Not awesome and I didn't try anything exciting with it, hence I'm not including it in Le Blog.

Round Two however, complete experimentation with excellent results. Earlier this year I was deeply saddened to find out that because Nutella contains milk, my dearest had never tried it. Such an atrocity should not be forced (or willingly given up in this circumstance) upon a person and thus I have been determined to come up with some vegan friendly version of this delicious spread. Well, last week at the grocery store I was parusing the faux milk isle and found Hazelnut Milk. o_O I exclaimed! Snatched it up along with some brutally awesome and surprisingly cheap Icelandic chocolate and began my journey towards Nutella Icecream.

I'd had some insanely good Nutella Gelato at this shop in Paris earlier this year and in no way did I replicate it. It was good though, the recipe is as follows:


1 c. roasted, skinned Hazelnuts
5 oz bittersweet chocolate
3/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. Hazelnut Milk
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1 c. plain soy yogurt
1/4 t. salt
1 egg*

Put hazelnuts in blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Add 1/2 cup milk if mixture is too stiff to blend. Meanwhile, chop your chocolate into little pieces and melt in a double boiler. Add remaining milk and sugar and stir constantly until sugar is dissolved. Remove and allow to partially cool. Once cooled, add to hazelnut mixture in blender along with yogurt, salt, and egg. Puree on high until fully mixed. Refrigerate until completely cool then add to icecream maker. If mixture is too stiff after refrigeration, add more hazelnut milk.

This stuff is intense. I put more chocolate in my original recipe and it was too much honestly. So, in the above recipe I knocked it back a little bit. It doesn't exactly taste like Nutella per say but it is still nutty and chocolaty and delicious. The thing about grinding your own nuts is that they wind up like natural peanut butter. It's not completely smooth and amazing the way nutella is, but it is indeed superb. I will say, the use of the yogurt and hazelnut milk is excellent as it doesn't leave that soy icecream flavor.

p.s.- I realize this does not have a picture, which is careless and insensitive, but my camera is out of batteries and my charger got lost in the fray. Hopefully I'll find it before the icecream is all gone.