Recipe for chocolate hazelnut snowballs
Christmas in Switzerland wouldn’t be the same without biscuits! So that sweet-toothed vegans don’t miss out this year, we’ve baked the chocolate hazelnut snowballs from Tibits – and they’re delicious. And you’re guaranteed not to get brain-freeze with these snowballs!
In the run-up to Christmas, many of us start trawling through grandma’s cookbook, websites or social media for tasty biscuit recipes to try out. It’s the perfect activity to do with children, friends or family. We’re all familiar with ginger bread or cinnamon stars, so we really wanted to try something new this year, and we came across this recipe for vegan Christmas biscuits. We all know someone who’s vegan – and it’s nice to treat them, too.
Another key factor while searching for a recipe was that we didn’t want to spend too long in the kitchen. So these vegan chocolate hazelnut snowballs from Tibits are perfect. These tasty warm snowballs need only a few ingredients and are pretty easy to make, which is perfect for the busy run-up to Christmas!
Ingredients
- 200g dark chocolate (vegan)
- 370g ground hazelnuts
- 25g buckwheat flour
- Pinch of salt
- 150 ml Soya or oat milk (not gluten-free)
- 200g demerara sugar
- 80g icing sugar
Method
Step 1: Spread the ground hazelnuts on a tray lined with baking parchment and roast for 5 minutes. Leave to cool. Grate the chocolate (don’t melt it, because otherwise the balls won’t be light and fluffy when baked). Mix lightly in a bowl with the hazelnuts, buckwheat flour, salt and demerara sugar. Add the oat milk and mix to form a dough. Cover with cling film and place in the fridge overnight for the best taste – or for at least 10 minutes if you’re in a hurry and can’t wait that long.
Step 2: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (fan). Important: make sure the oven isn’t too hot, because the vegan biscuits won’t take too kindly to over-baking. To be on the safe side, you can buy an inexpensive thermometer to hang in the oven.
Step 3: Line two trays with baking parchment. Take the dough out of the fridge at the last minute to keep it as cool as possible. Form the mixture into snowballs about the size of a walnut, roll them in icing sugar and place on the two trays. Check the oven temperature and bake the chocolate hazelnut balls for 8 – 10 minutes until a pretty web pattern forms on their surface. Leave the balls to cool on the trays (they are still pretty soft at first after baking). If you want your snowballs to be pure white, roll the cold balls again in icing sugar.
Tip: You can also swap the hazelnuts for other types of nuts.
Recipe by Tibits