Hazelnut Praline Paste

Hazelnut Praline Paste is really used in France and when I was living there I bought it from the supermarket. The Valthona brand is for me the best and you can buy. Click here if you want to Buy Valrhona Hazelnut Praline Paste  If you think it is a bit expensive you can buy the Love ‘N Bake brand here Buy Love ‘N Bake Hazelnut Praline, All Natural . Anyway I really think the best is to made it yourself by following this easy steps by steps recipe.

Here I have to prepare my own Hazelnut Praline Paste as the only Hazelnut Praline Paste I found in New Zealand was in a specific shop and it was really expensive.  Hazelnut Praline Paste is made from a mix of nuts and sugar syrup. French pralines are a combination of almonds and caramelized sugar. In this recipe I used hazelnuts because my purpose was to do an hazelnut butter cream to stuff some macaroon and also to prepare some home made chocolate hazelnut spread for breakfast. You can also use this recipe as a gluten free breakfast spread, in any gluten free baking recipe or  to flavour vanilla custard and stuff eclair like in this Hazelnut Eclair recipe here. If you want to know more about how to use hazelnut praline paste this French pastry cookbook will include lots of easy and yummy recipes. Click here for more information The Art of French Pastry

It is a really easy recipe where you caramelised nuts in a pan and then crushed the mixture to obtain a powder (called pralin and looks like hazelnut ground) or a Hazelnut Praline Paste (called praline). If you do not crush the caramelised nuts it is also really nice to eat them as is at movie time instead of popcorn.