How to make praline paste with this easy and flavorful recipe. Made with roasted hazelnuts and almonds, this delicious paste is amazing for flavoring all your fillings and pastry preparations.

Why you'll love this recipe

The praline paste (praliné) is a creamy and delicious preparation widely used in French pastry and worldwide to flavor and add fragrance to cakes, fillings, and pastries recipes.

Composed mainly of half hazelnuts and half almonds that are roasted in the oven to bring out all their flavor before being caramelized in sugar syrup and then blended until obtaining this very concentrated paste.

In French patisserie, we use the almond and hazelnut praline paste to flavor the fillings of pastries like in the famous Paris-brest, or to flavor the chocolate feuilletine crunch.

You can easily buy it ready-made in the shops, but a homemade praline paste recipe is much tastier and is perfect to flavor a buttercream, a chocolate ganache, a sponge cake, a pastry cream to fill choux pastry, or macarons.

Ingredients you need

Here is an overview of the ingredients and possible substitutions to make a homemade praline paste, scroll down the page to see the quantities in the recipe card.

Nuts: Usually a mixture of raw hazelnuts and raw almonds to make the classic recipe, but you can easily replace them with other nuts such as pecans.
Sugar syrup: a mixture of water and white granulated sugar used to make sugar syrup for caramelizing nuts. Do not replace white sugar with brown sugar or other sugar such as coconut sugar.

Materials: To make this French praline paste recipe, you need a powerful food processor to reduce the caramelized nuts to a smooth paste.

Optional :

Chocolate: Melted chocolate can be added to the praline paste to make a hazelnut chocolate spread paste.
Spices: Ground cinnamon or pumpkin spice blend to flavor the dough.

⚠️ You will find the quantities and complete instructions in the recipe card at the end of the page.

How to make hazelnut praline paste

1 - Roast nuts

Place raw almonds, and raw hazelnuts (whole or crushed nuts) with skin on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Heat in a preheated oven at 300°F / 150°C for about 15 to 20 minutes. They will turn to a darker color and the skin will start to peel off and you will also smell the delicious roasted nuts.
Let the toasted hazelnuts and toasted almonds cool for about 10 minutes, then rub them in a tea towel to remove some of the loose skin.

Tip: You can also make it with only almonds or hazelnuts but also with pecans and other dried fruits.

2 - Make the sugar syrup

Place the water and sugar in a saucepan.
And heat over medium heat while checking the temperature with a cooking thermometer, which should reach about 240°F / 116°C.

Notes: In some praline recipes caramelized sugar is made in which the nuts are added, but in this French recipe which is faster syrup is made by mixing water and white sugar which is much faster than reducing sugar to caramel.

3 - Caramelize the nuts

Place roasted hazelnuts and almonds into the saucepan containing the sugar syrup.
Heat the mixture over medium heat for about 20 minutes while stirring with a wooden spatula from time to time.
The mixture will first crystallize and give a white coating on your nuts.
Continue cooking until the sugar is completely dissolved and you have a brown mixture of caramelized almonds and caramelized hazelnuts.
Immediately remove the mixture to a piece of parchment paper, as it cools the nuts will harden.

Tip: Be careful not to burn your preparation, keep an eye on the cooking until the mixture is an amber color, if you burn the preparation your paste will have a taste bitter.

saucepan with with sugar coated hazelnut and almonds

4 - Mix the preparation

Start by placing a small amount of caramelized nuts in your blender or food processor and blend at high speed until you obtain first a nut meal, then add the rest and blend again.
Blend on high speed in 2-minute increments to avoid overheating the mixture until you have a smooth, homogeneous praline spread.
Pour your almond and hazelnut paste into a jar with a tight-fitting lid.

What to do with hazelnut praliné

The praliné has a very strong taste of grilled hazelnuts and it is a delight in the mouth, we could eat it on a slice of bread so delicious, here are some recipe ideas:

As a filling for crêpes or pancakes
On your tart and tartlets recipes
As a filling for a brioche, like in the babka recipe
To make a praline-flavored chocolate ganache
To flavor chocolate chip cookies or other sugar cookies
In a cake roll like this recipe for chocolate hazelnut yule log

Storage and tips

Room temperature: Place in a clean jar with a lid you can keep this praline paste for several months.

Reduce sugar: You can reduce the sugar in this recipe by half to make it less sweet.

Chunky spread: To have a less creamy spread with more chunks, just stop mixing a little before the desired texture.

More filling recipes

Did you like this recipe? Don't forget to rate it and leave me a review in comments! And to not miss any recipes follow @sweetlycakes on Instagram and tag me to share it if you make this recipe 😊!

Praline Paste

5 from 1 review

Author: Fadela
Total Time: 35 minutes
Yield: 20 servings

Print Recipe

Save Recipe

Description

Easy recipe for homemade praline paste with hazelnuts and almonds roasted and caramelized to flavor your desserts and cakes. For a large pot of 500 g approximately

Ingredients

200 g (1 ½ cups) Hazelnuts - raw
200 g ( 1 ½ cups) Almonds - raw
250 g ( 1 ¼ cups) Sugar
62 ml (¼ cup) Water

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 300°F / 150°C and place the almonds and hazelnuts on a baking sheet.
Roast the almonds and hazelnuts together in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Rub the nuts in a cloth to remove the loose skin.
Over medium heat, bring the water and sugar to a boil in a cast-iron or heavy-bottomed saucepan and, using a cooking thermometer, check the temperature of the syrup, which should reach 240°F / 116°C.
Then add the whole almonds and hazelnuts with the skin and stir with a wooden spoon for about 20 minutes.
The sugar will first crystallize, then it will completely melt and caramelize and take an amber color.
Then remove the caramelized hazelnuts and almonds to a baking sheet and let them cool completely.
When they are cold, blend them in your food processor in 2-3 times (to avoid overheating the dough).
At first you will get a fine meal, continue to blend until you get a smooth liquid paste.
Pour the mixture into a jar with a tight-fitting lid.