Hazelnut spread with dark chocolate

Dark hazelnut cream with cocoa from Venezuela

Hazelnut cream with dark chocolate by Tastelanghe from Piedmont. Sixty percent ground hazelnuts from the family's own orchards, plus cocoa mass from Venezuela and real Bourbon vanilla. No palm oil, no milk powder, six ingredients in total.

Hazelnut cream with dark chocolate is a spreadable nut butter from Piedmont. At Tastelanghe, it consists of 60% ground Piedmont hazelnuts, combined with cane sugar, cocoa powder, cocoa mass from Venezuela, cocoa butter, and Bourbon vanilla. Six ingredients, that’s all it takes.

Tart, nutty, not too sweet

Chocolatey, nutty, savory – this is the darkest of the three creams and the least sweet. The Venezuelan cocoa gives it depth and a fine bitter note, which the Tonda Gentile hazelnut balances with its nuttiness. If you prefer dark chocolate over milky spreads, this is the one for you.

The vanilla comes from real Bourbon pods, processed with the seeds. No palm oil, no vanillin, no milk powder – this cream is the only one of the three without milk content, making its flavor the most pure.

In the jar, it looks darker than its two siblings, almost like a chocolate ganache. On bread, it becomes a thin, glossy layer that melts immediately upon biting into it.

Sixty percent nut, you can taste it

Sixty percent hazelnut is an unusually high amount for a chocolate cream. In well-known spreads from the supermarket shelf, the nut content is in the single digits, with sugar and vegetable fat making up the rest. Here, the nut is the star of the spread, and sugar takes a back seat.

You can tell by the taste and see it in the consistency. A cream with such a high nut content is denser and less smooth than one made primarily of fat. It sits heavier on the bread and lingers longer in the mouth.

The nuts come from the Quazzo family's own groves in Somano, a village in the Alta Langa south of Alba. Alberto Quazzo began processing his family's harvest himself in 2018, instead of selling it to large-scale buyers as the generations before him had done.

From nut to cream

It starts with the roasting. Only then are the hazelnuts ground, and for a long time, until the nut oil is released and the flour becomes a flowing mass. You cannot achieve this point with a food processor; it requires a refiner.

Then cocoa, cocoa butter, and sugar are added, and the mass is ground further until the particles are so fine that the tongue no longer perceives them as individual grains. With a 60% nut content, this is the true art – too much nut quickly makes the cream sandy.

On ice cream, it firms up instantly

Enjoyed straight from the spoon, it pairs well with a strong espresso, or in the evening with a glass of Barolo Chinato. It also works well as a filling in a dark tartlet, or as a topping over vanilla ice cream, where it firms up immediately upon contact with the cold.

Those who are adventurous can spread it thinly over ripe Pecorino – the bitter notes and the salty cheese go together surprisingly well. And on a slice of hearty sourdough bread, with a little fleur de sel on top, breakfast almost becomes dessert.

You can find other specialties from Tastelanghe made from the same hazelnuts with us – the hazelnut cream with milk chocolate as the mild sister, the Tartufo Dolce Nero as a chocolate truffle with the same dark profile, or other nut creams from our range.

Storage

Store in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight. Do not refrigerate – the cream will harden and lose its spreadability. Stir briefly before first use if some oil has separated. With a 60% nut content, this is expected and not a flaw, but an indication that there are no artificial binders used to stabilize the oil.