Home-made chocolate nut spread

well, not totally 100% home-made as I didn't make the chocolate from scratch! I bought it :P

something like Nutella but I made it with almonds instead of hazelnut

So, I was wanting to eat bread with chocolate spread today, and I don't have Nutella at home, it's not a common item in my home. I had some baking chocolate compound and some overtoasted almonds :P (I overtoasted some almonds last week for my cookies, it was a little on the dark side which will not appeal to the customer but it was not burnt yet. So I keep it for myself)

Well, if you want to do this too, it's very easy, just need some baking chocolate, milk, dark or semi-sweet up to you, some butter, and some ground almonds. Mine were toasted slivered almonds, grind it in a blender to fine crumbs...not fine enough but that'll do. I don't really measure for this one, simply throw it in, eyeing the amount to my liking, but for the sake of posting this, I'll work out some measurements for you:


Ingredients:
1 cup of compound chocolate (milk, dark, semi - I used a mix of Beryls milk compound and the 60% cacao chocolate block from LeBourne)

1 and 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/3 cup of ground almonds

Method:

1. Melt chocolate and butter in double-boiler. I just put a heat-proof bowl on top of a small saucepan quarter-filled with water. Heat with low heat. You can also use microwave to melt your chocolate. (we don't have microwave :P )

2. When the chocolate and butter have fully melted, stir in your ground almonds.

Tadaaaa, finished. Easy. This makes about 1/3 full of the small disposable round container. You can throw away the measurements and just put in the amount of chocolate and ground nuts that you like. Just not too much butter as it will make your spread runny and oily. I would say keep about 1-2 tablespoons of butter for 1 cup of chocolate - maybe.

For the nuts, use any nuts. Nutella is with hazelnuts, that would be good too, but the always-in-stock in my house is almond. You can even make it with peanuts. Notice how the nuts in mine look coarse and chunky? That's probably because I used the dry blender to grind it, if you have food processor it may do the job better. If you like fine, smooth end product, you can even put the mix of chocolate and nuts in your food processor and whirl it smooth. But I love chocolate too much that I won't let even a speck of chocolate waster on the walls and nooks of my blender. Do not waste, especially good stuff like chocolate!

Cool the spread thoroughly first before storing in airtight container and into the fridge. Enjoy!