If you like Nutella then you’ll love Gianduja gelato. In fact, chocolate and hazelnut is one of the most classic Italian gelato flavors. My recipe doesn’t use any pre-packaged spread, but good old fashioned fresh roasted hazelnuts for the ultimate gelato flavor!
Gianduja, also spelt gianduia, is a classic gelato flavor made from chocolate and hazelnuts. Now, many people use a premade paste like Nutella when making this gelato at home. However, I can promise you that roasting your own hazelnuts and grinding them up makes such a better tasting gelato.
For this gianduja gelato recipe I am starting with a base Sicilian gelato. This means I use a little bit of corn starch as the thickener – which also helps create an extra creamy gelato when using a home-style machine. If you have a favorite gelato base then feel free to use that instead. While you could use these ingredients to make an ice cream, there is a pretty significant difference between ice cream and gelato – although similarly they are both delicious!
What You’ll Need
As with all of my ice cream recipes on Scoops of Delight, you need an ice cream machine. The exact style and brand does not matter too much but you do want one that is decent quality. I personally use the Smeg ice cream maker. The only issue with it is that you need to already have a Smeg stand mixer – which can be quite pricey. While there are plenty of recipes for no-churn ice creams, I often find a properly churned ice cream magnitudes better.
Some other things you will need for this homemade ice cream recipe are:
- Mixing Bowls
- Whisk
- Steel Pans (I personally find steel the best for making ice cream, but you can use any as long as you are careful about the temperature.
- Rubber Spatula
- Sealable Container (The best thing to use to store homemade ice cream is plastic in my opinion. You want something that is more flat than tall as it provides more surface area to quickly freeze in a home freezer).
- Kitchen Scale (optional, but recommended as almost all of my recipes use metric as it is more precise than imperial for most home cooks).
How To Make Gianduja Gelato At Home
This recipe is super simple, and only requires a few easy to find ingredients. For the chocolate I always recommend buying the best quality you can, in this case I use a mix of Callebaut 823 and 811, but you can choose whatever ‘dark’ percentage you normally like for chocolate ice cream.
Gianduja Ingredients
400 ml Milk
200 ml Heavy Cream
150 grams Chocolate (My ‘dark percentage’ is around 42 percent, so basically a rich milk chocolate. Gianduja is traditionally made with milk chocolate, but you can of course go darker if you wish).
130 grams Hazelnuts
100 grams Sugar
24 grams Corn Starch* (corn starch can be quite finnicky if you aren’t used to it, which is why I recommend using a kitchen scale to measure ingredients).
1/4 tsp Salt
* If you don’t want to make a Sicilian style gelato, you can replace the corn starch here with 0.8 grams of Xantham gum instead, and use a blender to combine all the ingredients before chilling. This is how I make my very tasty pistachio gelato.
To prep the hazelnuts place them in a single layer in an oven safe pan or baking dish. Then pop them into the oven at 165C for around 15 minutes, giving them a shake every 5 minutes to roll them around.
Next add the hazelnuts to a kitchen towel and roll them around. This should easily remove all of the skin making them fully ready to turn into a paste. If you find some hazelnuts have hard to peel skin, you can pop them back in the oven for another 5 minutes or so.
To make the Sicilian gelato base, add the milk, salt, sugar, and corn starch to a pan. Put on medium heat and whisk until steamy and slightly thickened, about five minutes.
Turn off the heat and add in the chocolate. Alternatively you can pour the hot milk over the chocolate in another bowl and let it sit for a few minutes before mixing. Make sure either way the chocolate is fully melted into a homogenous mixture.
When the chocolate is fully melted you can put the heat back on medium and whisk until you get a thickish, custard consistency. Immediately pour the chocolate mix into a large mixing bowl.
This next step you can do two ways. If you have a food processor then use it to turn the hazelnuts into a paste/butter. Then simply fold the hazelnut butter into the chocolate. If you don’t have a food processor you can use a stick blender to blend the freshly roasted and peeled hazelnuts with the hot chocolate mix. This won’t create as smooth of a mix as a food processor would, but it still tastes delicious.
Lastly add in the cream and fold everything together until you have your gianduja gelato base mix. Place the bowl into the fridge to chill completely before churning.
Churning Gelato At Home
Place your chilled gianduja base into your gelato or ice cream maker and let run according to your machine’s instructions. If you are using an ice cream machine make sure to set the speed to the slowest setting as gelato is churned differently than ice cream. While you might notice ice cream nearly doubles in volume, gelato shouldn’t increase at all as you do not want air pumped into it.
I choose to garnish this homemade gianduja gelato with some whole hazelnuts like you would see in a traditional gelateria. You can also drizzle over some melted milk chocolate for added effect. Enjoy!
Gianduja Gelato
Equipment
- 1 Ice Cream or Gelato Maker
- 1 Mixing Bowl
- 1 Food Processor | can use a stick blender but the final product might still have bits of nut pieces spread around
- 1 Rubber Spatula
- 1 Sealable Container
- 1 Kitchen Scale | optional, but highly recommended
- 1 Pan
Ingredients
- 400 ml Milk
- 200 ml Heavy Cream
- 150 grams Chocolate My ‘dark percentage’ is around 42 percent, so basically a rich milk chocolate. Gianduja is traditionally made with milk chocolate, but you can of course go darker if you wish.
- 130 grams Hazelnuts
- 100 grams Sugar
- 24 grams Corn Starch corn starch can be quite finnicky if you aren’t used to it, which is why I recommend using a kitchen scale to measure ingredients.
- 1/4 tsp Salt
Instructions
- Place your hazelnuts in one layer on an oven safe pan or baking tray. Bake at 165C for about 15 minutes, shaking every five. Remove and place onto a kitchen towel. Roll them against eachother to peel all of the skins off. If you have a food processor, process the hazelnuts now into a paste/butter and set aside. If you are using a stick blender then stop after peeling them.
- In a pan add the milk, salt, sugar, and corn starch. Place pan on medium heat and whisk for 5 minutes, or until steamy and slightly thickened. Take off heat and add in the chocolate. Let sit for a couple minutes, then whisk to combine completely. Place back on heat while whisking until you have a pudding or custard consistency, about 3 minutes.
- Place the chocolate mix into a bowl. If you turned the hazelnuts into a paste then fold that in now. Otherwise add the whole hazelnuts and run through the bowl with a stick blender until as pureed and homogenous as possible.
- Trickle in the cream while folding with a rubber spatula. Place bowl into the fridge to chill completely.
- Place the chilled gianduja base into your ice cream or gelato maker and run according to your machines instructions. If you are using an ice cream machine with no gelato function, then set the speed to the slowest possible setting to avoid pumping in any air. If your machine does not have speed options, turn it off for 5 minutes every 10 minutes to allow some of the air to deflate out.
- When churned place gelato into a sealable container and pop in the fridge until it reaches between -10 and -15 degrees Celsius. Serve with a few hazelnuts as garnish and enjoy.
Gianduja Gelato
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