Yes, packaging, you're right. The brand Delicabar (Bon Marche) makes nearly the same in silver color. I tasted it at "le salon du chocolat" with Alisa (7 euros the tube). At the end of my tasting I told the woman : "Oh, It tastes like Nutella !". She was really upset with me and told me that it was not the same and bla bla bla. I felt really guilty but five minutes later as we were far away from the Delicabar, Alisa and I began to laugh about the story.

I fully support your buying ANYTHING based on the packaging. And if ever given the chance I hope for the same support in return. :)

like nutella? hazelnut aftertaste? please tell more...

oh, home made nutella! do post the recipe...I'd love to try it since Nutella has trans fats.

Oh please, share the recipe! I must recreate that flavor I remember... mmm...

I agree with the comment about the nutella ingredients. I was going to forever avoid this haunting chocolate spread until I found a most acceptable substitute. In the U.S. there is a discount chain called Aldi. They have a store brand chocolate hazelnut spread that contains....Sugar, vegetable oil (in the U.S. this is usually soybean oil), hazelnuts (13%), skimmed milk powder, fat reduced cocoa, emulsifier: lecithin, flavouring.
I have to admit that the last jar was eaten off a spoon.

Yes, yes, Homemade Nutella!! Pleeeeease let us know when you try it, and would you share the recipe??
Thanks for the amazing website, I love visiting Chocolate and Zucchini and reading your posts!
Ana

Are you sure about gianduja being a brand name? I could swear that's the sign on every bin of chocolate-hazelnut gelato I've ever seen. Perhaps I need to fly to Italy at once to do a little research

1) Post the nutella recipe!

2) How do we get some of that in the States? I tried to follow links to the maker's web site, but their shop online button doesn't work!

It is a sad day for fans of good chocolate.

Oh, yes, please Clotilde - put up the homemade nutella recipe, complete with your assessment. :) I'd love to be able to make it for my husband, who likes Nutella well enough, except that it's overpriced here in our local market. We've taken to making our own nut butters for the same reason, and it'd be lovely to be able to make Nutella.

Clotilde, I'm awed, you even managed a link to pastiglie Leone, sweets practically only people from Turin (and lots of people from Turin) eat in Italy. And yes, giunduja is the blend of chocolate and hazelnuts, giandujotti the chocolate pieces made of this blend, brands can vary.

What a wonderful post! I spent a summer in Turin, and gianduia was one of the great pleasures there. "Chocolate-hazelnut" is not a very good description of gianduia; the regional specificity of the taste differs from a lot of chocolate/hazelnut combos you see in the States. The hazelnut flavor is stronger, perhaps?

One of my favorite memories of Turin revolves around trying as many different kinds of gianduia as possible. There is one gelateria, downtown - I can't remember the name! - that is famous throughout Italy I believe.

Also, another wonderful use is bicerin, the chocolate-hazelnut drink made in all the cafes. Every one I tasted was made a little differently... There was a bicerin liqueur that was produced locally.

The Aldi brand nutella copy isn't bad at all. Aldi started off in Germany, where the per capita nutella consumption is around 5 kilos a day.* Often I even see Germans eat nutella-like spreads on top of a layer of (unsalted) butter. They have shrugged off my bewilderment by saying that during and after the war, they didn't have butter, so it's perfectly logical for them to make up for that loss of 60 years past.

Nutella tastes really good with cherries. Is it a coincidence that gianduiotto, along with those famous cherries, are both from Piedmont? No, it isn't. Ferraro made them both famous. ;)

* Statistic entirely fabricated.

Il gianduiotto

Ingredients:

Bitter chocolate powder 80g
Eggs 2
Sugar 150g
Butter 100g
Amaretti (cookies) 100g
Roasted almonds 50g
Whipped cream 1 cup

Take one whole egg and a yolk in a bowl. Add the sugar and beat the mixture until it becomes foamy. At this point, add the chocolate powder and mix well. Chop the butter into small pieces and put them into a cup. Soften the butter by heating the cup in the steam from a boiling kettle.

Incorporate the sugar mixture by mixing well with a wooden spoon or a whisk. The butter has to turn into cream and unify perfectly with the other ingredients.
Finely mince the almonds, crumble the amaretti, and add both to the cream, mixing constantly.

Feed the mixture to a charlotte mould (translators note: apparently something like a ramekin, or a dish for crème brûlée, any experts?) with an oiled piece of paper, empty the mixture and carefully smooth down the surface. Let cool in the refrigerator for a few hours.

When serving, empty the mould's contents onto a dessert tray and decorate with whipped cream.

Translated from: http://www.italianrecipes.ws/piemonte/ricette_recipes/piemonte_002_gianduiotto.shtml

(Recette traduite en vitesse, mais toujours compréhesible à mon avis)

And the French comment less compréhensible... I meant to delete it when I decided to comment instead of e-mail.

Lovely, Clotilde! I will watch out for the posting of the homemade nutella recipe. This all reminds me of a confection I used to make - bittersweet chocolate with hazelnut butter and binded with some crushed wafers flavored with hazelnuts, cut into small squares. I should make this again as I am now salivating.
Merci..Thanks..Danke..Gracias..Salamat.. Gratie..Arigato..

Chocolate + hazelnuts = Food of the Gods!

I have a mental picture of you sneaking the tube from your bag for a furtive taste of this paste to counteract the stress of rush-hour metro rides, much like men in times past would whip little silver flasks from their pockets for a quick nip of whiskey.

Please blog about the homemade version, I'd love to make it!

Hey, the elegant tube stuff is vegan! We don't do dairy in our house, and we have a lot of friends who are vegan. If I can figure out a way to score some Gianduioso, it will make me sooooo popular! Thank you Clotilde, all this blog fun and now instant popularity!

I am not a fan of Nutella, but am a fan of great packaging. Can you provide the address for the store, Resonances? I tried to go to their site, but it doesn't seem to be working. thanks!

A lovely memory of my one visit to Paris is the street vendor near our hotel who sold crepes. You could chose from about 85 different fillings. That was my introduction to Nutella and it was decadent and heavenly. I had to have a Nutella crepe every evening.

But on thinking about it, on my NEXT visit to Paris, I think I will at least try a nibble of a Calvados-soaked apple filled crepe... (I've been thinkinig about this for eight years now...)

Some interesting debate here! (as always of course ;- )) On value and taste... and top market brands and low esteem brands such as Aldi: there is no chance that a low budget brand will ever get the qualities of a topper, BUT some of the products are good value indeed. I found a little trick for the ALDI products: consult the UK site (at http://www.aldi.co.uk) where they have to compete in a different market (to such fashionable high street brands as M&S): they point to different aspects of the products on offering and this might guide you to good value products in the marketing blend that is offered in your country.

oh i love leone pastilles! yum. gianduja sounds wonderful, too.

This looks exactly like what we have in Slovakia(called Pikao) - it is a rich chocolate flavoured condensed milk. I love it!

Faith, you might mean caffè Florio, a ninteenth century cafe where the first Prime Minister of unified Italy had his hot chocolate, or Grom,, more recently opened, close to the central station, according to some the country's best ice cream

Peter, the quality (or lack thereof) of house brands of chains like Aldi etc. is not that clear-cut. My first summer job was flipping gingerbread cookies for glazing at one of the big gingerbread producers in my home town in Germany, and they had one single production line there. The cookies slowly moved towards the end, where a single wrapping machine with slots for wrappers for six different brands was waiting. Depending on what was needed the cookies turned there and then into Schoeller Lebkuchen (back then about DM 2.90 for 6 cookies), the prestigious Haberlein Metzger brand (DM 4.90) or cheapo Aldi house brand cookies (DM 1.90). Stonyfield Farms does the same here in the US (Check out the yoghurt at Trader Joe's, which, by the way, also belongs to Aldi...)

For those in the US, I recently discovered a nutella copycat at Whole Foods called choconut (Rapunzel is the brand). It has no evil ingredients and may even be organic or fair trade (can't remember). It is delicious- not quite as sweet but but much more hazelnutty than nutella. It's not cheap but I think it is worth it!

on choconut (see lee's comment above): its organic and has no trans fats! it is relatively expensive but if you just cant live without chocolate-hazelnut spread you may get the non-trans fat variety (and perhaps feel less guilty in the process...hehe)

"the cavity of a raspberry"...I'm imagining that in Latin...painted somewhere...certainly on old wood...further drooling...and then there's Vegemite in a tube which is something else again! looks like tar and tastes like salt..you either adore it or not...fresh bread, hard butter, dabs of the black stuff..heaven..

Growing up with Nutella, 'till now I never realized non-Nutella countries even exist!

If you are worried about what goes into Nutella, try Green & Blacks Organic Hazlenut Chocolate Spread. I eat it as a treat by the teaspoonfull.

is there anywhere to get the gianduia cream in a tube anywhere online or in the u.s.?

it's true - the germans love their nutella - i was visiting a family in heidelberg some time ago, and we would come back from a night of beer drinking to DEVOUR dark bread just slathered with nutella. i still crave it now. and cannot find similar bread to this day!

well, I love Nutella, but it's the trans fat that prevents me from making it a guilt-free habit. . . I made my own nutella once, and it turned out okay, but the texture wasn't the same--a little gummy! Looking at the nutella.fr website and the nutritional info, nutella in France doesn't have hydrogenated fats, while the N.A. version does! Hmmm. . .

PLEASE !!!! Post the homemade nutella recipe. We could all try it out and why not compare our notes after. Pleazzzzzz

I was thinking Nutella would be a healthy snack for my toddler, until I looked at the ingredients list. Please post your homemade recipe PLEASE so I can nourish my son without the bad bits!!!