For the Ferrero Rocher lovers who don’t eat gluten and or dairy, but still fancy those flavours, they are really easy to make too. They are chewy, chocolatey, nutty and are perfect served with an espresso. They really don’t taste dairy and gluten free.
Recipe
Makes about 8 biscuits
Ingredients
- 200g of whole raw hazelnuts with the skin on
- 100g of icing sugar
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1 egg, separated
- 50g of chopped up dark chocolate (roughly)
- a pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract
How:
Preheat the oven to 200c/180c fan and line a large baking sheet with baking paper. Tip the hazelnut la onto the baking tray and roast for six minutes. Leave to cool (I left the oven on at this point).
Put the roasted hazelnuts into a food processor and blitz till they are a powder, about two minutes. Add most of the chopped chocolate, saving a bit for sprinkling on top of the biscuits. Add the icing sugar and baking powder and whizz up till they are mixed together. Add the egg yolk and whizz up again, at this stage it should still look like breadcrumbs. Set aside.
In a big bowl whisk up the egg white with the salt and till it reaches soft peaks. Add the hazelnut mixture and with a wooden spoon, mix together to form a dough. It’s fairly sticky. Divide the dough into 8 balls and place on the baking sheet with enough space for them to spread. You might want to do this with damp fingers if it’s too sticky. Sprinkle with the remaining chopped chocolate and bake for about 10 minutes.
Take out of the oven and leave to cool for a bit (they are soft when they come out of the oven) then put them on a plate and cool in the fridge, which will make them more chewy. Serve straight away with a strong coffee.
I shop at:
Waitrose
Sainsbury’s
Tesco
Lidl