THE ART OF BAKING: NOTELLA

Baking has long been my hobby and passion. It's something I love doing in my spare time, and often on the weekends. Getting some fresh ingredients from the supermarket or market and creating something new is very exciting. Sometimes I am not happy with the results and it needs some finetuning, it's just a process of trial and error! I have been hosting dinner parties whilst in Brussels, Brighton and Melbourne, and hope to do this back in the homeland too.

Although I usually eat quite healthily, I recently started eating with as little processed foods as possible. I always had problems with my stomach and digestion system, so being careful with what I eat has been a second nature to me as long I can remember. So all the healthy food blogs have been quite handy in finding new and healthy ideas for recipes.

Now I got my own food processor (love it!), I can make a lot more recipes. Today I created my first 'notella'. This is kind of a mock nutella, with the rich and creamy goodness of nutella, but without any preservatives, refined sugar or butter. Instead, you use only 4 ingredients! How easy is that? The recipe is not made by me, but I used two recipes from two different food bloggers and adjusted it a little bit. Here we go:

- 100 gr white hazelnuts
- 2 table spoons raw cacao powder
- 2 table spoons raw honey
- 1 heaped  table spoon of coconut oil
- some water to adjust the thickness

First, you have to soak the hazelnuts for at least 6 hours. You can do this overnight if preferred. After you have soaked them, drain the water and put them in the food processor. Blend until quite smooth. Heat up some coconut oil and pour the liquid in the food processor. Then add the other ingredients and mix until all is smooth. You can adjust the thickness by adding some water, depending on how you like your 'notella'.

And then you have yourself some healthy spread for on your slice of bread! (or eat it straight out of the food processor if you can't wait!)

Enjoy!

PS: One of the recipes can be found on food blogger that always gives me a lot of inspiration. Find her blog here