Frozen Hazelnut Hot Chocolate

Have you ever had a frozen hot chocolate? It's one of my favorite summer treats. They're icy and cold - like a cross between a milk shake and a slushy. Frozen hot chocolate might seem like an oxymoron, but these really do taste like hot chocolate and not at all like a regular chocolate shake.

You can make them with your favorite hot chocolate mix, but I like to make mine with milk and cocoa powder. If you decide to use a mix instead, keep in mind that it will get diluted by the ice. Adding in some melted chocolate chips helps it retain an intense chocolatey taste.

I love chocolate and hazelnut together and I decided that frozen hazelnut hot chocolate sounded great. Instead of adding in melted chocolate, I added Nocciolata organic hazelnut spread. Nocciolata is one of the products presented at the recent Fancy Foods Show, and they sent me a jar to review/play around with. The spread is very similar to Nutella, but it's organic. It's also thinner. At first I didn't know how I felt about that - I like the thick, frosting-like consistency of Nutella. But then I realized it means that the Nocciolata is really easy to spread....meaning you can cover more surface area with less spread and save yourself some calories. It also meant that it blended very easily into this frozen hot chocolate and didn't all end up in one blob.

I like that the ingredients are simple: sugar, hazelnut paste, sunflower oil, skim milk powder, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, and vanilla flavoring. That's all. I think that the hazelnut flavor is also more pronounced in the Nocciolata than it is in Nutella, and the spread isn't quite as sweet. It's definitely not something you want to be eating every day, but it does make a very nice treat.

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