I was having a freezer clear out and I found a batch of white chocolate ganache lurking in the back. I needed a recipe to use up the ganache and I’ll be honest I wanted something that wasn’t too taxing. These vanilla & hazelnut melting moments are just perfect.
I know you’re probably thinking that hazelnut praline paste doesn’t sound very simple, but I made a batch of this because I was having an issue with my food processor and I wanted to properly test it out. The praline paste can be made really far in advance and lasts a really long time, so you can use it in lots of different ways.
I used it in this hazelnut chocolate tart recipe, but it is delicious on pancakes, on top of ice cream, drizzled on porridge or just eaten straight from the jar. It’s more commonly known as the filling in Paris-Brest and it is lovely added to melted chocolate to make a gianduja.
I found the recipe for these vanilla & hazelnut melting moments in Helen Goh and Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Sweet and I adapted them to work with the fillings I already had. They’re really easy to make and if you don’t want to make the praline paste, you can just fill them with ganache, or jam or lemon curd.
Vanilla & Hazelnut Melting Moments
Ingredients
Melting Moment Mix
- 175 g Plain Flour
- 65 g Corn Flour
- 65 g Icing Sugar
- 1/8 tsp Salt
- 170 g Unsalted Butter softened, cubed
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
- Yellow Food Colouring
Hazelnut Praline Paste
- 375 g Blanched Hazelnuts
- 140 g Granulated Sugar
- 45 g Water
Vanilla White Chocolate Ganache
- 75 ml Double Cream
- 250 g White Chocolate Chopped
- 1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
Instructions
- To make the hazelnut praline paste, place the hazelnuts on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and roast in a pre-heated oven at 170C Fan for about 10 minutes until golden and fragrant.
- Place the sugar and water in a saucepan and cook over a low heat to dissolve the sugar. Increase the heat to high and cook the syrup to 116C.
- Add the warm hazelnuts and stir to coat them evenly. Continue cooking the hazelnuts and syrup until they are a deep amber colour and no sandy white bits of sugar remain. Spread onto a baking sheet to cool completely.
- To turn this into praline paste, put the caramelized hazelnuts in a food processor, blend until a smooth and runny paste forms this will take about 8 to 12 minutes. You may find your food processor gets hot, so you'll need to give it breaks while making it. This recipe will make more than you need. Place the excess in a sterilised jar.
- To make the ganache place the white chocolate in a bowl and warm the cream in a pan, bring the cream to the boil and then leave it to cool for a minute before stirring it into the chopped chocolate until it has melted. Add the vanilla bean paste, stir and leave to one side to cool. The ganache can be made up to 3 days in advance.
- To make the melting moments, preheat the oven to 170C/150C Fan/Gas Mark 3 and line two baking trays with baking parchment.
- Sift the flour, corn flour, icing sugar and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the butter and mix until the texture of breadcrumbs.
- Add the vanilla bean paste and the yellow food colouring and beat until it comes together to form a dough.
- Tear off bits of dough weighing 15g and roll them into balls and place them on the baking tray about 4cm apart. You will have 30 balls in total, enough to make 15 melting moments. Space them a few centimetres apart as they will spread a little.
- Take a fork and dip it in flour and gently press down on each ball of dough, just to flatten it out, you don't want to be harsh with it and press right through it.
- Bake for 25 mins, rotating the trays halfway through the baking time. You don't want the biscuits to take on any colour.
- When baked leave them on the tray to cool as they will be fragile. After 5 mins move them to a cooling rack.
- To assemble the melting moments, pair up the biscuit halves so that they are similar sizes. Place the white chocolate ganache in a piping bag and snip off the tip. pipe a ring of ganache around the edge of the melting moment.
- Take the hazelnut praline paste and place a small amount in a piping bag and snip the end off. Then place a small amount of paste in the centre of the biscuit. Take another melting moment and sandwich them together. Keep going until you have sandwiched all of the melting moments together. Store them in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
Thanks for reading.
Angela
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