Ferrero Roche

“The combination of hazelnut and cocoa is divine!!!! I simply HAD to create a vegan and gluten free version. They make a wonderful vegan Christmas gift.”

Prep time - 60 minutes

Cook time - 30 minutes

Difficulty - Advanced

Serves / makes - 12

Ingredients

Hazelnut centre -

12 hazelnuts

Filling -

25g cooking chocolate, melted (I use 70% cocoa chocolate)

25g hazelnuts

50ml milk

10g sugar, I used golden caster sugar

1/8t vanilla paste

Biscuit sphere -

50g finely ground polenta

30g gram flour

20g sugar

10g sunflower oil

20g plant milk

To stick the two halves together -

10g cooking chocolate, melted

For the outer coating -

50g + 50g cooking chocolate

40g hazelnuts

Equipment

Baking tray

Food processor or chopper attachment of a hand blender

Baking paper

Rolling pin

Small star cookie cutter

Small silicone 24 sphere mould with spheres approximately 2.6cm wide

Piping bag

Sauce pan

Glass bowl for melting chocolate

Dipping fork or similar

Cooling rack

Method

Heat your oven to 180c/360f/GM4. Put all of the hazelnuts on a baking tray. Once the oven is hot, bake the nuts for 15-20 minutes until the skins are coming off the nuts. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool to the point you can handle them. Put them in a Tupperware box, shake the box vigorously. This will remove a lot of the skins, the rest you can do by hand. Discard the skins.
To make the filling grind 50g hazelnuts in a food processor. Add the melted chocolate, milk, sugar and vanilla paste, blend again until it is completely smooth. Set aside.
To make the biscuit sphere put the polenta, gram flour and sugar in a bowl. Mix well. Add the oil and milk, mix well and knead into a malleable dough. If it is too wet add more flour, if it is too dry add more water. Put the dough between two sheets of baking paper. Roll the dough to 2mm thick.
Cut the dough into small stars using a cookie cutter. The stars should be slightly bigger than the spheres in the mould (see the pictures below). Put the dough into the moulds, turning the points to one side to fill all of the sphere with the dough. Bake for around 15-20 minutes until the biscuits are fully cooked. Allow to cool.
Put the filling into a piping bag. Fill each biscuit sphere with the filling then add a hazelnut to half of the spheres. Put chocolate around the edge of a sphere that contains a hazelnut, top with a sphere without a hazelnut. Do this with all the Ferrero Roche and allow to set. You can set them in the fridge to speed up the process.
Roughly chop or crush the remaining 40g hazelnuts, put them onto a plate. Make sure they are spaced out on the plate. Use a dipping fork or similar to dip the Ferrero Roche into 50g melted chocolate. Roll them in the hazelnuts, place them on a cooling rack to set.
Once set, dip the Ferrero Roche into 50g melted chocolate and allow to set. Store in a cool dry place away from direct sunlight.