I love nougat. I am not alone in this either in the editorial office or in the country, but I love the classic nougat. Ditch the modern exotic flavours, ham, lollipop or french fry nougat. What I want is almond nougat or, best of all, chocolate nougat with hazelnuts or rice crisps.

The problem is that the same thing happens to me every year: I take several and eat at most one tablet, so the rest is left for next year… and it’s not the same anymore. This year I decided to make my own nougat for two reasons: to choose the ingredients, and if I have to eat nougat, let it be mine.

I found (and prepared) the perfect recipe for Suchard type nougat. I’ll tell you, but you have to be clear about one thing: This nougat is delicious, but it costs a fortune.

simple ingredients. The other day, while searching for the perfect Christmas recipe, I came across a video by Fuego Loco. It is a channel with very interesting and easy recipes, and one of them is my favorite nougat: chocolate with rice puffs. “Perfect,” I said to myself, so I went to get the ingredients:

• 200 grams of dark chocolate.
• 200 grams of milk chocolate.
• 100 grams of butter, butter or cocoa butter.
• 100 grams of puffed rice.

Even simpler process. In the video Santi explains it very simply and the preparation couldn’t be easier:

• You put water in a pot and put a bowl on top. We put both 400 grams of chocolate and butter (margarine in my case) into it. We turn on the fire and start stirring until the mixture melts.

• Once melted, immediately remove the bowl from the heat source and add the puffed rice. Fuego Loco uses chocolate puffed rice, but I bought plain puffed rice without any additions to eliminate that extra sugar. You give it a little stir to mix everything and it’s almost ready.

• We take a mold (whatever it is, it only affects the shape here), cover the mold with plastic wrap so that the chocolate does not stick to the walls and it is easier to remove it from the mold, and put it in the refrigerator.
• In about three hours we take it out, remove it from the mold and can eat or store it.

Saving is not nougat. Very good. This is true and no one can deny it to me. Plus, it’s super easy, and considering the traffic congestion in big cities, making this nougat at home is faster than buying it at the supermarket. Oh my god, these are so hard to do.

The advantage was that I could choose the ingredients, but this time I didn’t want to go all out and buy extravagant raw materials containing cocoa of certain origins or something like that: chocolate with sugar and that’s it. The problem is that we are in the middle of a cocoa inflation spiral and this is being felt in the market. My ingredients were:

• 200 grams of Valor dark chocolate tablets – 3.35 euros.
• Two Valor milk chocolate bars of 100 grams each – 5.58 euros.
• Puffed rice – 1.99 euro for a 125 gram bag.

Nougat? 10.82 (and I already had margarine at home and they sell dark chocolate with 52% cocoa). Price of Suchard tablet? Only 3.99 euros. In my defense, I will say that the classic Suchard tablet weighs 260 grams and makes half a kilo of nougat with the Fuego Loco recipe, but it is clear that the price is not worth it. Not Dubai chocolate, but almost.

tasting. I have to say a few things about homemade nougat. The first is that it is gorgeous. It’s not that I’m a great cook, it’s just that the chocolate is nice and the puffed rice gives this one a point. The latter is perhaps too much. You can make it a little lighter by reducing the proportions (especially rice puffs).

It’s very similar to Suchard’s or any of its kind, but also a bit more macaco. It’s not gross (or doesn’t feel like it to me), but I find commercial nougat sweeter and lighter on the chew. And the crunch of these commercial nougats is also a little more pronounced than mine. It may be due to my rice, but it doesn’t affect the taste at all.

Do not let the rice pass. Although mine was delicious, I realized something along the way: The puffed rice I received wasn’t as crunchy as other commercial options (sugary puffed rice cereal, oh my). This doesn’t bother me because I love the flavor, but if you want that crunchy bite, it’s better with crispy or sweetened puffed rice.

priorities. The good thing about this is that you can be as elegant as you want. My chocolates, as for testing purposes, are out of this world and neither the most expensive nor the cheapest. There are more ingredients in milk chocolate than I would like, but this way you have excellent control of what you put into your body and avoid ingredients you don’t want.

I will definitely not manage to eat a single bar because seeing the result of good but average chocolates, I want to repeat the process with more selected chocolates in a week. Now, I know my wallet is going to cry, but Christmas only comes once a year.

Pictures | Xataka

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