‘Burfi’ is a type of traditional Indian sweet that is eaten on days of celebration, and hazelnut + chocolate is my all time favourite flavour combination. So, I thought of combining western flavours with this traditional Indian sweet, and also make it vegan! This is a 5 ingredient hazelnut chocolate burfi recipe that’s as easy to make as it’s delicious.

This recipe is based on my previous 2 ingredient almond burfi recipe, which is even simpler to make! In my previous recipe I made the burfi by using just ground almonds and sugar. Here, we replace the ground almonds with ground hazelnuts, add vegan nutella, and top with even more chopped chocolate and hazelnuts for the intense hazelnut chocolate flavour. The secret ingredient for this 5 ingredient hazelnut chocolate burfi is instant coffee! We’re only adding a small amount here because we want the coffee to accentuate the chocolate without giving it an intense coffee flavour.

This recipe makes about 400g, but you can always scale it up or down if you’d like. The idea is to use about half as much water as sugar, and approximately the same quantity of sugar as ground nuts. You could always increase or decrease the quantity of sugar depending on how sweet you like your dessert.

The first step to make a vegan burfi is to create a sugar syrup. Add sugar and water to a saucepan and heat it up until the sugar melts completely. Heat this up until the syrup gets really thick and reduces to approximately half the volume it started out with. You can take a drop between your index finger and thumb and test how ‘sticky’ it is. I find that this hurts a lot since the syrup is really hot. So, I always skip this and just wait until it looks like it has reduced by half.

The next step is to turn the heat as low as possible and add the rest of the ingredients. Keep mixing until it gets to a dough-like consistency. You know it’s ready when you can roll a tiny bit of the mixture into a ball without it sticking to your hands. The hard work is finally over and now all we need to do is wait and shape! Once the dough cools down enough to touch, roll it out, cut into diamonds, and serve!

Hazelnut Chocolate Burfi

Recipe by EshCourse: DessertCuisine: IndianDifficulty: 2

Servings

400

g

Cooking time

20

minutes

Ingredients

• 200g ground hazelnuts

• 120g sugar

• 100ml water

• 1 tsp instant coffee

• 2 Tbsp vegan nutella

• Chopped hazelnuts to garnish

• [Optional] Chocolate to garnish

Directions

• Add the water and sugar to a pan on medium heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil.
• Add the instant coffee and stir to mix well. You could easily skip this step if you don’t like coffee.
• Add the vegan nutella (or any other vegan chocolate hazelnut spread) and mix until it’s all combined.
• Add the ground hazelnuts and continue cooking until it all comes together like a dough.
• Check whether the dough is ready or not by (carefully!) taking a small bit and seeing if it can be rolled into a ball withint sticking. If yes, then the dough and ready. Otherwise keep cooking.
• Spread the dough on a chopping board so it can cool a little bit.
• When the dough is cool enough to touch, shape it into a ball with your hands and roll it out into a rectangular block of desired thickness.
• Let it cool! Once it’s cool enough, garnish with chopped hazelnuts and chocolate. Cut it into squares and serve!

Notes

• The recipe can easily be doubled or halved, and in fact that’s what I’ve done this time for the picture in the post!
• I would recommend adding the toppings to the burfi after it has cooled down and been rolled out, otherwise the chocolate will melt and stick to the rolling pin!