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Nutty Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Bars

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Nutty Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Bars

Roberta Reynolds
It all started because I needed to come up with something fast for our first football tailgate gathering of the year. Hmmm…thoughts circled around a bar cookie of sorts, but it had to be something I could tuck into a Ziplock bag for munching on during the game (you know, if it went on FOREVER). I saw a recipe for Pecan Bars…close, but not exactly hitting the spot. Hey, wait a second! Let’s capitalize on what’s right in our own back yard. Did you know that Oregon is the largest producer of hazelnuts in the world? All the more reason to give them a spin. And so, the Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Bar was born. A thin and rich crust that will remind you a little of shortbread. But the star of this show is the hazelnuts, and there are a ton of them. First lightly oiled, salted, and roasted, and then roughly chopped and stirred into a magical combination of, among other things, brown sugar and milk chocolate. This will blow your mind and I’m not kidding. To make it even easier, all of this can be made in one bowl. No mixer. No food processor. Just you and a spoon. Have at it. This recipe was greatly inspired by the ‘Ultranutty Pecan Bars’ recipe from America’s Test Kitchen’s beautiful book: ‘The Perfect Cookie’. Everybody should have a copy of this treasure, so I hope you pick one up soon.
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Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 45 minutes
Servings 25 bars

Ingredients
  

  • FOR THE CRUST
  • 1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 6 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 stick of butter melted
  • FOR THE TOPPING
  • 4 cups hazelnuts
  • 1 cup milk chocolate chips
  • ¾ cup brown sugar
  • ½ cup light corn syrup
  • 1 stick of butter melted
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions
 

  • FOR THE CRUST
  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
  • Next, you’ll want to prepare your baking dish. Grab a 13x9 inch baking dish. Line the pan lengthwise with enough aluminum foil to hang over the sides by an inch or two. Now do the same thing widthwise, also leaving a couple of inches of overhang. Spray well with baking spray. This foil will act as a handy sling and allow you to pull your bars cleverly out of the pan so they will be a breeze to cut into squares.
  • Now, back to the crust…In a large bowl, stir to combine the butter, granulated sugar, salt, and melted butter.
  • Toss the crust ingredients into the baking pan, and pat down so your crust is evenly distributed. Put some muscle behind it because we want that crust nice and firm to stand up to cutting into bars later. Set aside.
  • FOR THE TOPPING
  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  • The first order of business is the hazelnuts. Line a rimmed cookie sheet with foil (you don’t really have to, but I do it to make clean up easier). Pour the 4 cups of hazelnuts on the foil, and drizzle VERY LIGHTLY with canola or some other neutral oil. You probably don’t need more than a couple of teaspoons worth of oil. Sprinkle with salt, and using your hands or a spatula, smoosh all the nuts and salt and oil together to make sure all is well coated.
  • Roast the hazelnuts until they start to turn darker brown and become fragrant. This has taken me anywhere between 15-20 minutes, but start looking at yours at about the 10 minute mark to make sure they don’t burn.
  • When the nuts have roasted, remove from oven and let them sit for about 10 minutes.
  • To chop: Place a double thickness of paper towel on the counter top. Scoop up about 1/3 of the roasted nuts, and using a heavy knife, roughly chop the nuts. All this will take is running your knife slowly lengthwise, then crosswise through the nuts. Since they will still be warm they will slice easily, and the paper towel will prevent them from sliding all over the place. When the nuts are chopped, make a sling out of the paper towel and pour them into the large bowl you already used to make the crust, or any other large bowl you may have hanging around. Repeat this process until you have chopped all the nuts.
  • To the nuts in the bowl, add the chocolate chips (you can roughly chop these too, but you don’t have to if you don’t want), brown sugar, light corn syrup, melted butter, salt, and vanilla extract.
  • Stir to combine everything, then pour this mixture over the crust you have waiting.
  • Press down gently but don’t get too carried away – your topping will be much prettier if you leave some appearance of texture on the top.
  • Bake at 350 for about 25-30 minutes. Bars will be done when they show bubbling all over the top of the bars. NOTE: They don’t have to be bubbling like crazy in the middle, but a few bubbles here and there are necessary.
  • Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 45 minutes. Lift the sling out of the baking pan and allow everything to sit a little longer until the bars are at room temperature.
  • OK, you’ve waited long enough. Cut into bars and enjoy!!

Let’s make no mistake about it – these bars are all about the hazelnuts, with the rest of the ingredients acting as a supporting cast (a mouth watering cast to be sure, but supporting nonetheless). Being my typical lazy self, I needed a quick way to dispatch those hazelnuts. Have you seen recipes where you are instructed to roast the nuts, cool them off, and then take a perfectly clean kitchen towel and proceed to rub the skins off? Ugh. First of all, this is a good way to ruin a perfectly good towel. Secondly, if you are extremely lucky, about 1/2 of the skins will actually come off. Believe me, I have tried this a number of times and ended up just getting mad about the whole thing.

Here’s what I ended up with, and I must say am quite happy with myself about it: Lightly spray the nuts with oil, add a little salt, and smoosh them all together. Roast them until they are super-fragrant and the skins are getting dark. For my oven, it took about 15 minutes or so. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes, or until your hands to not get incinerated from touching them, Scoop about 1/3 of them on a double thickness of paper towel, and run your knife through them a few times. The towel prevents the nuts from taking on a life of their own and jettisoning across your kitchen, and the paper towel can act as a sling to pour the chopped hazels right into a bowl.

The crazy thing about these bars is that you might think by looking at them they would be almost like peanut brittle and hard to bite into for fear of losing some teeth. Not true. They are super tender, and you will have no problem at all with that sticky, toffee feeling you might be suspecting.

The chocolate and brown sugar concoction used to bind the nuts together is sweet, but not too sweet, and the chocolate goes a long way to bring everything together. The crust is kind of like shortbread, and kind of does its thing and acts like a proper base for all of the topping without making an issue out of itself.

I love the idea of being able to make this in one bowl (except for roasting the nuts). It was a nice change of pace not to have to drag out any electrical appliances to make this all happen (but you still get to lick the bowl!) Make a batch, put a couple on a plate for yourself, and don’t forget to hide some for later snacking because these guys disappear fast.

I have made these bars both with milk chocolate (my favorite) and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Both are really, really good, so choose what you like best. The semi-sweet chips will make the bars a lot darker if you care about such things, but in my experience they don’t last long enough to worry about. I hope you love these! Thanks so much for reading today – I really appreciate it. xoxoxox

Hello. I’m Roberta Reynolds.

I’m so glad you dropped in! Welcome to Bird’s Nest Bakery and Café, a collection of ‘made from scratch’, seasonal recipes developed in my home kitchen. I’ve been obsessed with creating the easiest and most delicious recipes possible since I could reach the top of a stove.

I hope you’ll find this site a welcome and relaxing place where you can come for inspiration and ideas. Take a look, have fun, and feel free to modify these recipes to suit your particular palate. It would make me so happy if you would share these recipes with friends and family. After all, cooking and baking are meant to be shared with those we care about. That’s what’s so much fun about it!