Nutella

Nutella is not vegan. It was one of my kids' favorite treats but they would not eat it after they gave up dairy. Two weeks ago Andrew and I tried our hand at making a vegan nutella. We used this recipe. It was very good but getting the skins of the hazelnuts was a difficult job. These nuts were particularly tough to skin. (I've done it before and it was easy...was our oven not working hot enough?) It took about an hour. I started looking for blanched hazelnuts and found that they were $9.99 @ lb plus shipping.
Today I made nutella again but this time I used almonds. Cheaper and we liked it better.

Almond Nutella

2 cups almonds, raw, with the skins on!
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
bit of vegetable oil
bit of salt
1 T. cocoa powder
1 T. powdered sugar

Grind the almonds in the food processor until smooth...you have to feel them to check. Mine still looked a bit grainy but they were not. It still took a while in the food processor....10 minutes? about that. Melt the chocolate with about a teaspoon of oil; add to nut mixture. Add the rest of the ingredients and taste. I had to add a little more oil to get it to a spreading consistency.

The only thing we had to taste it with was some wheat thins. I laid down after eating about 3. Ten minutes later I came out of my room and the bowl was empty. I guess they liked it. :)
The hazelnut spread lasted a week. The Almond one 10 minutes.