Hazelnut Praline Paste
By Carine Claudepierre
Published on 09/25/2013 - Last updated on 04/22/2023
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This Hazelnut Praline Paste recipe is a copycat Nutella spread made with 3 ingredients for a delicious breakfast or as a base for a French dessert.
What’s Praline Paste?
A praline paste is a spread made of roasted hazelnuts cooked in homemade sugar syrup and then pulse into a creamy paste.
Hazelnut praline paste is often used in French desserts to flavor custard-like in the famous French praline eclairs or French macaroons.
There are two types of praline paste. Both are made in sugar syrup but use different types of nuts:
- Hazelnut Praline Paste – made from toasted hazelnuts.
- French Praline Paste – the one used in French desserts made from toasted almonds.
How To Make Hazelnut Praline Paste
It’s is very easy to make praline paste from hazelnuts at home. The ingredients you need to make this easy recipe for praline paste are:
- Hazelnuts – roasted hazelnuts are the best, but you can use raw hazelnuts and toast at home.
- Sugar – or brown erythritol to make a sugar-free praline paste.
- Water
Roast hazelnuts
First, select a good quality variety of hazelnuts.
Next, if you are using raw hazelnuts, toast or roast them for 5-10 minutes.
In the oven, line a baking sheet with parchment paper and roast the hazelnuts at 325°F (160°C) on the center rack of the oven.
You can also dry toast hazelnuts in a large non-stick skillet for a few minutes until fragrant.
Peel off hazelnuts skin
Now that your nuts are roasted place them onto a dry kitchen towel and rub them vigorously to remove the skins as much as you can.
That’s ok if some of the skin is left on a few nuts.
Discard the skin and keep the roasted hazelnuts aside in a bowl.
Make the Sugar Syrup
Meanwhile, in a non-stick saucepan, add sugar and water and heat over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and stirring with a wooden spoon or silicone tool.
Keep cooking until the sugar is dissolved, increase to high heat, bring to a rolling boil and keep cooking until golden in color – takes about 9 minutes in total to make a golden syrup from sugar and water.
Use a candy thermometer for precision
If you can, use a candy thermometer, a syrup forms at 350F. If you overpass this temperature, you can burn the caramel.
On the other side, under this temperature, the caramel will never form, and the crystal of sugar will stay in the saucepan.
Now that the syrup has formed, stop the heat.
Cover nuts with caramel
Pour the roasted hazelnuts into the saucepan and stir to coat all the nuts with the sugar syrup.
You can also proceed the other way and pour the caramel onto the nuts, but if the bowl that contains the nuts is cold, the caramelized nuts harden and stick to the bowl.
So I recommend option 1, stirring nuts into the hot saucepan with the caramel.
Cool completely
Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper.
Lay the hot caramelized hazelnut praline into a single layer onto the paper.
Refrigerate
You can pop the tray in the fridge to quickly cool down the nuts or wait for a few hours.
Process
Now that the hazelnuts praline are cold – you can eat them as a snack or place them in a food processor or high-speed blender to form hazelnut paste.
Process for 30 seconds, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and repeat until it forms a creamy hazelnut paste.
Add a pinch of sea salt for flavor if desired.
Storage Instructions
Praline paste stores very well in the pantry. You don’t need to refrigerate this praline paste.
Place the paste in a glass mason jar in a cool, dry place, and keep for up to 1 month.
Sugar-Free option
Hazelnuts are low-carb nuts that create delicious low-carb desserts.
To make this nut paste sugar-free, simply swap the sugar for erythritol or brown erythritol.
Both options melt as well as regular sugar and won’t add carbs or sugar to the recipe.
Serving ideas
You can use praline paste in many ways.
You can also flavor the paste by adding 1/4 cup melted chocolate or a few teaspoons of cocoa powder and create a hazelnut chocolate spread, similar to my Nutella recipe.
Serve as a spread
This praline paste is perfect to spread on crepes, pancakes or bread like :
Flavoring desserts
French recipes use praline paste to flavor dessert all the time. Often, praline paste is added in ice cream, custard pudding recipes, or no-bake cheesecake recipes.
Praline paste adds creamy, roasted nuts flavor to dessert, and it’s also gluten-free and dairy-free.
Have you made this praline paste recipe? Share a comment or review with me, and let me know how it turns out!
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Hazelnut Praline Paste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F (160°F). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and lay the hazelnuts on the tray.
- Bake the nuts for 8-10 minutes, stirring halfway. When the nuts are fragrant and roasted, remove the tray from the oven and place the nuts onto a clean kitchen towel.
- Rub the nuts with a towel to peel off the skin of the hazelnuts. It's ok if you can't remove all of it, but the most you take out, the smoother the paste will be. Discard skin. Set aside the nuts in a bowl.
- Meanwhile, add water and sugar into a non-stick saucepan. Bring to a simmer and stir with a wooden spoon or silicone tool. Keep cooking until the sugar has dissolved, then increase to high heat, bring to a rolling boil and keep cooking until golden in color – takes about 9 minutes in total to make a golden syrup from sugar and water.
- Stop the heat and stir in roasted nuts to evenly coat them with the sugar syrup.
- Pour the caramelized hazelnuts onto a baking tray covered with a piece of lightly oiled parchment paper.
- Place into the fridge for 10 minutes or wait for a few hours at room temperature until the caramel hardens and nuts stick together and forms clusters of pralines.
- Break clusters of caramelized hazelnuts, bring into the food processor or high-speed blender, and process at high speed until it turns into a past. You may have to stop the food processor every 30 seconds, scrape down the sides of the bowl and repeat until the paste forms. It takes about 2 minutes in total.
- First, you obtain a powder, then crushed nuts, and finally, it will turn into a paste.
- Store in a mason glass jar in the pantry for up to 1 month.
Notes
Want My Kitchen Equipment?
About The Author
Hi, I'm Carine, the food blogger, author, recipe developer, published author of a cookbook and many ebooks, and founder of Sweet As Honey.
I have an Accredited Certificate in Nutrition and Wellness obtained in 2014 from Well College Global (formerly Cadence Health). I'm passionate about sharing all my easy and tasty recipes that are both delicious and healthy. My expertise in the field comes from my background in chemistry and years of following a keto low-carb diet. But I'm also well versed in vegetarian and vegan cooking since my husband is vegan.
I now eat a more balanced diet where I alternate between keto and a Mediterranean Diet
Cooking and Baking is my true passion. In fact, I only share a small portion of my recipes on Sweet As Honey. Most of them are eaten by my husband and my two kids before I have time to take any pictures!
All my recipes are at least triple tested to make sure they work and I take pride in keeping them as accurate as possible.
Browse all my recipes with my Recipe Index.
I hope that you too find the recipes you love on Sweet As Honey!
Disclaimer
The recipes, instructions, and articles on this website should not be taken or used as medical advice. The nutritional data provided on Sweetashoney is to be used as indicative only. The nutrition data is calculated using WP Recipe Maker. Net Carbs is calculated by removing the fiber and some sweeteners from the total Carbohydrates.
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With just a food processor, do you end up with a slightly gritty texture? Either possibly from the nuts or sugar crystals, I got a nice paste, but wondering if I continued to process if it would get smoother?
Praline pasta as French make it should have gritty texture, it’s not smooth. That’s why I recommend a food processor, it won’t make an ultra smooth paste as high speed blenders.
This recipe looks delicious! I was thinking of using it for molded chocolates. Can you tell me why you use brown sugar instead of white? I’m just curious.
Thank you!
For the flavor mostly!
I am so confused. Why does the recipe call for Monkfruit Golden? And then why are people talking about sugar? Is it supposed to call for sugar?
Because some people are not on keto and simply used sugar with this recipe. But for keto you must use Monk fruit crystal
hi there! thank you for this recipe. I tried it over the weekend, but mine remains as crushed hazelnuts and could not turn into a paste. I blended it for more than 2 mins but remains the same. Do you have any suggestion how I can save my crushed hazelnuts? Thank you!
Maybe your food processor doesn’t have a strong blade to crush the hazelnuts into a creamy paste. That’s the only reason I see its not working here. I hope it gets better next time, Enjoy the recipe on the blog, XOXO Carine
I followed your recipe and must have done something wrong (perhaps took the caramelised nuts off of the heat too early?) because the praline has loads of little bits of caramel/sugar crystals. Do you think its possible to reheat the praline to melt the sugar down? Thanks!
Sure, reheat to dissolve into a caramel, it should be fine. Enjoy, XOXO Carine
About my last comment; I am hopeful that it explains the difference between Hazelnut paste and Hazelnut butter. Many recipes seem to ask for the paste but it is hard to locate while hazelnut butter I can find readily (it is 100% hazelnuts; raw or roasted I don’t recall).
P.S. Your recipes are really terrific
Hi
You say that the sugar will dissolve slowly turning into a caramel – golden sugar syrup – after few minutes. But it didn’t even if I waited more than 20 minutes. It started to melt at some point but then crystallised again.
What could be the problem?
Which sugar did you used? Caramel forms between 300-340F, if it doesnt form it is probably because your temperature is too low.
Can I use a different type of sugar than coconut?
Sure, brown sugar or regular sugar will work well too. Enjoy ! XOXO Carine.
Hi! Thanks for the recipe, it looks amazing I cant wait to try it.
Oh, wow! Beautiful , thank you for a great recipe
Happy you like it ! Enjoy the blog recipes. XOXO Carine.
Hi! I just wanted to know that what else can we use instead of hazelnut ??
I am not too sure as I did not try something else but I am pretty sure almonds will be great too. Enjoy the recipes on the blog. XOXO Carine.
Is it possible to use a Nuribullet in place of a food processor? I don’t own one and I’m relying on this recipe for my French project. No one seems to sell Praline spread which blows my mind! Thank you!
Hello ! I am not sure as I never used a Nutribullet before. I guess it could work. Let me know if you give this a try ! Enjoy the french praline recipe. I started to make my own for the same reason, it is impossible to buy some from the store outside of France! Crazy right? XOXO Carine.
Thanks for sharing my recipes! Carine.