Nutella yumminess

Jaimie and I found a great deal on some delicious chocolate hazelnut spread so I went a-searching for some recipes to use it in.  Holy cats there are a lot of wonderful recipes out there.  We've previously used it in a bread roll from a Food & Wine magazine recipe, but there are a lot of creative ideas out there.  We even found out that there's a Nutella Day (February 5th), but why wait till then to write about all of our Nutella experiments.  See nutelladay.com

Since it was the holiday season, we decided to make some things we could hand out as gifts.  Part of our Nutella mini spree was chocolate hazelnut biscotti.  

It was pretty easy - just toast the hazelnuts, toss the ingredients together and bake twice.  You need to bake it once in two long strips, then let it cool, cut it and bake it again.  You could probably even do the first baking part in the morning or day before and then finish it off later.

We also made chocolate hazelnut fudge with a sprinkle of sea salt on top.  It was so good I had to make a second batch when my sister came over.  One blogger said that she was too afraid to try the sea salt and instead added sugar sprinkles.  I think the sea salt adds a lovely intensity when you get a bit of salt in that bite.  It's just really delicious.

Fudge in the makeshift double broiler

We added homemade caramels, home canned foods & a bottle of mead and that was what almost everyone got for their holiday gift this year.

With so much Nutella left, we made ice cream, loosely using a recipe we used before making peanut butter ice cream.  I just added a cup of Nutella to 1/2 cup sugar and blended, then added 2 cups milk, one cup cream, a pinch of salt, and put it in the ice cream maker.   Jaimie said that it was the best one we've made so far.