This is a delicious basic recipe to have on hand for complimenting any of your cakes or desserts.

INGREDIENTS:
1. Sugar- 80 g
2. Water- 30 ml
3. Peanuts- 170g
4. Hazelnuts- 150g
5. Salt- 1/4th tsp
6. Dark Chocolate- 300g
7. Coconut Oil (or any other oil you like)- 30ml (optional)

PROCEDURE:
1. In a non-stick pan over medium heat, toast both the nuts until they start getting golden brown, develop a shiny surface and get fragrant. Keep it aside.
2. In the same non stick saucepan, add sugar and water to melt over medium high heat.
3. Let it melt and go deep brown colour and then turn off the heat. At this point, you have the basic sugar caramel. Be careful not to burn the sugar. This might take a maximum of 2-3 minutes.
4. Add the toasted nuts to the caramel and put it back on low heat while constantly stirring with a spatula until the caramel coats the nuts completely.
5. Take it off the heat and spread over a silicon mat/ baking sheet lines with parchment paper for the caramel-nut mixture to cool down and go hard. This is kind of like the nut brittle used in a lot of desserts.
6. After it hardens and cools, put rub it through a food processor and grind it until it becomes like a powder.
7. Open the food processor and give it a good scrape because this mixture is sticky.
8. Keep grinding it until the oils from the nuts start releasing. And the mixture becomes kind of liquid from the natural nut oils.
9. Depending upon the quality of the nuts, sometimes it may not release as much oil for the mixture to become liquid. This is where the coconut/any other oil comes handy. Add the oil to the mixture and grind again until the mixture becomes smooth and liquid.
10. Melt the chocolate separately and fold into the nut mixture.
11. Add salt and combine well.

Your basic spread is ready! This can be used for various desserts, frosting, toast spreads etc!
Happy eating!

Note- If you don’t get Hazelnuts, you can substitute the same quantity of peanuts and follow the same procedure.