Are you a lover of Nutella or cocoa creams? Of course, who doesn't? But you will say … I can only take it in my cheat meal 🙁 Well friend, we have good news!
Thanks to this recipe that we present below, you will not have to wait for your free meal to enjoy the cocoa cream. By cooking it ourselves we ensure that it is suitable for our healthy lifestyle, avoiding added sugars and saturated fats. And the most surprising thing is its secret ingredient, pumpkin!
Why use pumpkin?
Pumpkin is a carbohydrate rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and vitamins A and C, among many other minerals. In addition, in every 100gr of boiled pumpkin there are only 20 calories ! You may wonder why it is interesting to add this fruit to a Nutella that originally only had milk, cocoa and hazelnuts. Thanks to the pumpkin we find a soft and pasty texture, similar to commercial cream. Its nutritional composition has nothing to do with what we find on the supermarket shelves. It is true that we should not stuff ourselves with this recipe, but without a doubt you will be opting for a version with a great contribution in nutrients.
In the case of Nutella, more than half of its content is sugar. In the rest of the ingredients we find palm butter (horror!), Powdered milk, cocoa and hazelnuts. Obviously, if we compare components … Ours wins by a landslide!
Do not be afraid to make the cocoa cream with the pumpkin because you will not notice its taste in the least. In this recipe we also avoid refined oils and sugars, so we are only going to use natural sweeteners such as stevia, honey or agave syrup.
Ingredients
- 400gr of pumpkin (better if it comes vacuum packed, peeled and cut)
- 200gr of natural hazelnuts or natural toasts
- 3 tablespoons defatted cocoa powder Valor
- 2 tablespoons of natural sweetener: honey, stevia, agave syrup …
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence (optional)
Preparation
Fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the squash.
Leave it on medium-high heat for about 15min and check with the help of a fork that the pumpkin is cooked.
Once it is done, we put it aside on a plate with kitchen paper and wait for it to cool down. It is important that you use kitchen paper so that it absorbs as much water as it can.
We have to create our own hazelnut cream, so put the 200gr in a blender or mixer. This process will last you about 10 minutes, since you will have to be removing the hazelnuts from time to time so that the blades can continue grinding.
You should have a light cream, like the hazelnut or peanut butter you see in supermarkets.
Once we have our hazelnut cream and the cooked pumpkin, we add all the ingredients in the same mixer.
(It is convenient to add the ingredients little by little until you find the flavor you want).
