You Spin Me Right 'Round, Baby, Right 'Round

With vacation to burn before the end of fiscal, I extended my birthday weekend by two days and decided to devote one of them to making hidden hazelnut pralines. Armed with 35 chocolate discs made the week prior, which I had arranged on a wax paper lined cookie sheet, I was ready to move on to the next step.

First I put 300 grams of hazelnuts onto a pan and toasted them in the oven for about 10 minutes. I then wrapped them in a clean towel and let them steam for a minute, before rolling them around in the towel to remove the skins -- an effective, if messy, process. I set aside 35 hazelnuts and then weighed out 225 grams from the remaining nuts, setting them aside to cool.

I then melted 50 grams of dark chocolate using a direct tempering method. Using a dot of chocolate on each disc, I attached a hazelnut to the centre of each one.

Next I tossed the hazelnuts with an equal weight of powdered sugar into my food processor. The instructions in Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier said to process them "until the mixture has a runny consistency." Now, I've made nut butters before, so I knew the process would take at least 15 minutes. But the addition of the sugar really slowed down the process. I scraped down the sides. I stared at it. I scraped down the sides again. I tried walking away. I scraped the sides. And after 30 minutes the nut paste was finally "runny."

It was about this time that I decided it would be a good idea to grab a towel and wipe the powdered sugar away from the food processor. Unfortunately, I forgot that I'd used it to remove the skins of the hazelnuts. Grabbing it without thinking, hazelnut skins rained down across the counter and the floor. Clean up on aisle one? I paused my work to clean up the mess I'd just made.

Back on task, I transferred the nut paste to a bowl and added 225 grams of tempered dark chocolate to it. I stirred it every few minutes, monitoring the temperature of the gianduja and checking the consistency for piping. Somewhere around 20 degrees Celcius, the consistency appeared correct, so I transferred it to a piping bag fitted with an open star tip. Then I commenced piping.

And that's when I realized my critical error. Yes, worse than hazelnut skins raining down on my kitchen from a towel. As I attempted to pipe a rosette around each hazelnut, the chocolate discs -- shiny side down on a piece of wax paper -- starting spinning right 'round, like a record baby. I had no way to control them and no easy method to hold them in place without getting gianduja everywhere. Undeterred, I experimented with different piping styles and then decided to just chase the discs around and hope for the best. Lesson learned -- next time I'll put them on a silicone pad or similar surface to prevent them from spinning quite so much.

I also learned just how tricky it can be to pipe gianduja. The heat from my hands started to melt it while I was piping, so a few pralines were too soft and didn't hold their shape quite as well. At the end of the day, it didn't matter all that much because they did set up. 

Behold! Hidden hazelnut pralines. These are insanely delicious and, despite the piping challenges, very pretty. They also have an incredible texture with the snap of the chocolate disc, the crunch of the nut, and the creamy gianduja.

I would probably consider a few modifications if I were to make these again. First of all, I would probably use a milk chocolate disc instead of dark chocolate. I personally don't like the appearance of the gianduja against the dark chocolate disc -- even though the gianduja was made with dark chocolate it looks like milk chocolate because of the added nut paste. That said, I also don't think anyone who ate one looked at the bottom, so maybe it doesn't matter. I also might try a slightly smaller piping tip for the rosettes or I might use a large French pastry tip instead and pipe more of a bullet shape. 

Will I be hiding nuts inside gianduja again in the future? 

As sure as I'm sitting here singing, "You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round, like a record baby, right 'round, 'round, 'round..."