If you’ve hung around here a while, you’ll know that I’m pretty obsessed with hazelnuts (hazelnut cheesecake, hazelnut truffles, hazelnut cake, Nutella cookies, Nutella cupcakes, being some of my favourites). And to think that a hazelnut fanatic like me can’t find some quality hazelnut extract around here is a total shame.
After reading up on how homemade liqueurs and extracts are made, I made the extract with tweaks to a liqueur recipe and ended up with something extremely flavourful. Now this might not be the most ‘authentic’ way to make extract, but I promise you, you won’t complain once you smell the buttery, luxuriant extract at the end of 4 weeks. And just because we can, we’re going to add a vanilla bean to make the extract smell even sweeter.
One thing that is extremely important, and shouldn’t be skipped is toasting the hazelnuts. When you toast the hazelnuts, you will see that the oils from the hazelnuts come to the surface and make it shiny. This is the oil you want emulsified into your extract, this is the fragrance you want to capture.
Hazelnut Extract Recipe
4 oz. (100g) hazelnuts
3/4th cup or (180ml) vodka
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
½ cup sugar
1/4th cup water
- Toast the hazelnuts in the oven at 175C/350F for 8-10 minutes or until fragrant.
- While still hot, transfer them into a jar with vodka.
- Add the innards of the vanilla bean along with the vanilla bean to the jar.
- Let the flavours infuse for 3-4 weeks in a cool, dry place.
- The colour of the extract will darken with time.
- At the end of 3-4 weeks, drain the hazelnuts from the extract and reserve the extract. Crush the hazelnuts up and push it through a sieve to remove every last bit of flavour.
- In a saucepan, heat the sugar and water together. At this point, adding the crushed hazelnuts is optional, but I went ahead and did it, just so I extract every ounce of flavour from it.
- Bring the sugar syrup to a boil (and strain it, if you’ve added the crushed hazelnuts to it in the step above) and add it to the hazelnut extract mixture. You can now discard the crushed hazelnuts.
- Shake it up and store in a sterilised bottle (These 1/2 pint jars would be just adorable for storage!)
- Enjoy a dash of hazelnut flavour with whatever you like!
- I now store mine in the refrigerator.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
love the blog and love hazelnuts too…just a quick question..maybe stupid too, after crushing the hazelnuts what then? Are you saying we crush the hazelnuts and sieve them and add back to vodka infussion?
I just started reading your blog a couple of months ago, and I absolutely love it! I’m definitely interested in trying out this hazelnut extract recipe. I share your love of hazelnuts, and was really grossed out by the extract that I bought at the store, which tasted nothing like hazelnut. It ruined my Nutella-filled cupcakes. I never thought of making my own!
What a GREAT idea! I’m going to try this! It has never occurred to to me make extract before.
Love this idea, bookmarking it right now! And maybe I’ll even make a liqueur.
Any thoughts on how long it keeps?
Hopefully you’ll start DB-ing again soon.
Thanks Sommer!
Linda: My guess is it should keep for 2 months or so.
Not so Nuts on any NUTS…sooo kidding!!! Hazelnuts are second to my favorite Brasil nut. Basically I love them all.
I second the motion on never having thought of making my own extract.
I’ve made amazing ‘Limoncello’…a recipe I got from an Inn owner on the French Riviera…absolutley devine. And, yes…everything this decadent necessitates our dedication and patience.
BTW…speaking of hazelnuts…did you ever have a chance to make crispy cookies named ‘Brutti ma Buoni’…loosely translated…ugly but good! They really are terribly easy to make…tasty and only 3 ingredients. If you’re interested I made a batch and added it to my blog.
Again, thank you for sharing an interesting recipe. Flavourful wishes, Claudia
ooh the brutti ma buoni cookies sound interesting. hopping over to your blog to check them out. thanks claudia
recipe from an Inn owner on the French Riviera? Sounds so romantic!
Oh how awesome! Great post!
I always spend ages looking for hazelnut liquer when I run out.
This is such a clever idea!
Need to try this…sounds interesting and I’ve never made my own extract.
~ingrid
Thank you! I’ll use this whenever I want a shot of Nutella-esque flavor. I’m not sure whether you’ve tried to make your own Nutella, but it’s easy. http://www.sugoodsweets.com/blog/2005/12/nutella/
i missed so many of your posts, probably cuz of your migration to wordpress. just went through all the posts. drooool
I just found this website about a month ago and have been waiting, extremely impatiently, for hazelnuts to show up in the stores. Yesterday, still couldn’t find any, so this morning I thought, hey, Central Market! They had them! So I got them and vanilla beans and stopped and got vodka. Going to start it after caring for all the farm animals! So excited, all the hazelnut on the market has anti-freeze it it!
hi, thank you for receipe on hazelnut extract. i too love hazelnut flavoring. one thing i did not find in the instruction was how to handle the skins that are on the nuts. i did find another website that describe what to do so i can go ahead and make mine!!! thank you, bill wolner
Hi!! This recipe looks fantastic!! I was wondering… do you think that I could do the same w/ pistachios to make an extract? Or have you heard of any good recipes? Thanks in advance!
That’s such a fun idea! Don’t know where you might find the recipe but if you do try it, please let us all know how it works out.
Hi,
I was wondering, are these raw hazelnuts? I ask this because I thought nuts from the grocers shelf was already toasted, so I need to know if I just go buy ready to eat hazelnuts? Thanks!
Hi Carol, for this recipe you need raw hazelnuts, not toasted. You want to capture the oils that shimmer on the surface on roasting.
Thanks, can’t wait to try this!
hi, i added the crushed nuts(coffee grinder) back into the sugar syrup and the nuts absorbed all the liquid; i added another 1/4 c of water to thin it. and i did not have and cheesecloth to strain which would have been a great help. probably adding the crushed nuts to the vodka solution would work better. bill
Oh thanks so much for sharing this recipe my husband and I love hazelnut flavored coffee and this is perfect as I know exactly what is in it! This is so easy too:)
This didn’t work out so well for me. It was more like hazelnut flavored vodka. Adding it to my coffee was like a shot of Baileys, maybe it would have cooked off in recipes, but I don’t see why you can’t just use Hazelnut oil for baking? Hazelnut oil has a very strong hazelnut flavor and you can buy it online or certain grocery stores pretty easy. (Please don’t try to make that yourself.) The hazelnuts also absorbed alot of the liquid, so I was left with much less in the end and the hazelnut particles left in the alcohol separated/sunk to the bottom so you’d have to shake it up and it just didn’t give a very strong punch of hazelnut in comparison to hazelnut oil. You can’t use the oil for coffee but I guess in terms of coffee its best to buy it already flavored, but as far as baking, it really does the best job.
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