A few days ago, during one of those rare moments when I get to sit down and not only watch television, but hear it as well, a commercial for Nutella came on. In a previous life, I loved Nutella so much that I could have eaten the better part of an entire jar of the stuff in one sitting. Okay, who are we kidding...I could have eaten a whole jar, depending on the level of comfort I was seeking at the time. But those days of eating Nutella by the jar, or at all - for that matter - since we no longer eat dairy, are gone and how I miss them so.
So when this commercial came on for that oh-so-yummy chocolate hazelnut spread I got to thinking to myself, how hard could it be to make a gluten-free (Just so that I do not mislead - real Nutella does claim to be gluten-free but because it contains dairy, it does not meet our specific dietary needs.), dairy-free Nutella copycat from scratch?
I made plans to purchase some hazelnuts on my next trip to the health food store and I would "wing it" with my attempts to create a homemade "Nutella." A good dose of hazelnuts (Nutella only claims to contain approximately fifty hazelnuts per 13-ounce jar), some cocoa powder, agave nectar or perhaps some coconut palm sugar, coconut milk (the real stuff, not coconut milk beverage), and some vanilla and I was certain I would have exactly what I was looking for and would have made it with less sugar and with real ingredients, unlike like some people whose product contains so much sugar, it qualifies for the lead ingredient on the ingredients list.
Right about now, I feel like I should be doing the nah-nah-nah-nah-boo-boo thing here.......in their defense though, at least they are using sugar and have not jumped on the high fructose corn syrup bandwagon.
Okay, so fast forward to yesterday when I got done at the Y a little earlier than expected and decided to swing by the health food store on my way home. I was in the refrigerator aisle looking at all the different bags of nuts, looking for hazelnuts, when a little voice inside my head told me to check out the regular store shelves in that same aisle - which happen to contain nut butters, jams, preserves, conserves, and other goodies I should not eat - just to see if there were any sales.
(And, gee, I wonder where my son gets his inability to stay on task and focus for any given ten seconds.)
Right there smack in front of me was a "NEW!" product and if you have not guessed what it was, I will give you a hint: I believe predestined drive exists, in this case, my drive to purchase hazelnuts led me to find a product exactly like the one I was there buying ingredients for to make from scratch.
Justin's all-natural Chocolate Hazelnut Butter contains no artificial ingredients and the first ingredient on the list is - who'da thunk?!? - hazelnuts! It tastes like a grainier version of Nutella and is not quite as sweet, which is fine by me, considering we have cut out many sugars from our diet in our house and our palates have, as a result, become quite sensitive to "sweet." The maker does not claim the product to be casein-free but the label states that it is gluten-free and dairy-free and there are no obvious casein-containing ingredients listed. With that, I consider it to be "safe" to give to the kids and gave them small spoonfuls to try, just in case they might have some reaction or intolerance to the hazelnuts (Reiss blows serious chunks whenever he is given cashews). They loved it!
They loved it so much so that half the jar is gone only one day later! We sat around and ate it by spoonfuls (or is it spoonsful? Like mothers-in-law instead of mother-in-laws), pulling a new spoon out of the drawer with each bite....no second-hand spit-containing double-dipping allowed here!
At $7.89 per jar on sale, perhaps I should go back and stock up.....????
And no, Justin is not paying me to say any of this. Just as I was not aware of the existence of his product until yesterday, most likely he has not found me yet either.
EDIT 7/7/2010: I do indeed plan to call the company to be sure they are using gluten-free vanilla and to make certain their cocoa butter is truly dairy/casein-free. Unfortunately, as I learned yesterday from a visit to a local farmers market, sometimes when people say their product is free of gluten or casein, what they don't realize is that - while their own finished product may not include gluten or casein-containing ingredients - the ingredients themselves may have gluten or casein in them. i.e. Not all brands of vanilla are gluten-free.
No comments:
Post a Comment