Let’s cook – easy sugar-free Hazelnut Chocolate Spread recipe

Kids love their sweet treats just as much as parents do, but there’s a balancing act between indulgent and sugar-overload. We’ve been leafing through a brilliant new book, Sugar Free Baking, and we’ve hand-picked a couple of recipes to share with you – we’re sure your kids will love these! Today’s sugar-free fancy is Hazelnut Chocolate Spread – yes, please!

Just because a treat is sugar-free, doesn’t mean flavour-free too. SweetLife’s Carolyn Hartz has launched a collection of 60 healthy, sugar-free recipes in her new book, Sugar Free Baking. It’s packed with recipes that don’t use any everyday or hidden sugars, just 100 per cent natural ingredients.

“Not only are my recipes free of white sugar but each recipe has absolutely no hidden sugars such as honey, agave, coconut sugar, fruit juice concentrate or rice malt syrup either. This means you truly can have your cake and eat it too,” Carolyn says.

The recipes are sweetened using Xylitol, described by Carolyn as a natural, sugar-free sweetener, “derived from birch trees, the husks of corn cobs and found in many fruits and vegetables that we can eat on a daily basis. Xylitol is even produced naturally in small amounts in our body.” Here’s Carolyn’s guilt-free Hazelnut Chocolate Spread recipe:

Sugar-free Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

Makes approximately 500ml (or 500g).

Ingredients

300g raw hazelnuts
180g Perfect Sweet Xylitol
50g pure cacao powder or good quality cocoa
¼ teaspoon salt
40ml coconut oil, melted

Method

Preheat oven to 180˚C/160˚C fan-forced. Spread the hazelnuts evenly over a baking tray and roast for 10 minutes, shaking the tray after five minutes so they roast evenly, until lightly browned. Place toasted hazelnuts on a clean tea towel or cloth. Rub in the towel to remove as much of the skins as possible.  Transfer the hazelnuts to a food processor and process until finely ground. Add the Xylitol, cacao, salt and coconut oil and process until smooth. Spoon into a clean airtight container or jar. Keep refrigerated.

Recipe tip: Not all the hazelnut skin will come away when you roll them in a tea towel. This method is just to remove the excess loose skin.

Do you have a recipe that’s a hit every time? We want to know about it! You can send us your favourite recipes, and while we can’t reply to each submission, we’ll certainly let you know if your recipe is chosen to be shared with the Babyology community. We can’t wait to hear from you and look forward to seeing your culinary creations!