When hazelnuts and chocolate collide, interesting things begin to happen. For example, World Nutella Day is celebrated millions around the globe on February 5.
It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention and adding hazelnuts when cocoa is hard to come by may have been an Italian trick during hard times. In the 1800s, in the northern Italian city of Piedmont, they made a paste of chocolate and hazelnuts at a time when the nuts were abundant, but the cocoa was not.
At the end of World War II, cocoa was once again difficult to come by. Pastry Maker, Pietro Ferrero, made loaves of this sweet paste and called it Giandujot. Soon after, the Ferrero Company was founded on May 14, 1946.
It wasn’t until 1951 that Ferrero made the paste into a spreadable form. We wouldn’t even recognize the spread by name until 1964 when Ferrero’s son Michele gave the jar of creamy hazelnut and cocoa the name Nutella.
Sara Rosso founded World Nutella Day in 2007 in celebration of and a way to introduce her favorite spread to her friends. She first discovered Nutella while living in Italy as a food blogger. Read more about her discovery and creation of World Nutella Day at whenihavetime.com.
- You could circle the world 1.8 times with the amount of Nutella® produced in one year.
- The main ingredients of Nutella are sugar and palm oil, followed by hazelnut, cocoa solids, and skimmed milk. In the United States, Nutella has soy products.
- A jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds
- NAPOLEON AND HITLER ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WORLD’S NUTELLA ADDICTION. Back in 1806, Napoleon tried to freeze out British commerce as a means to win the Napoleonic wars (and take over the world). The result was a disastrous continental blockade that caused the cost of chocolate to skyrocket and left Piedmontese chocolatiers in the lurch. Ever resourceful, chocolatiers in Turin started adding chopped hazelnuts to chocolate to stretch the supply as much as possible.
- IT ORIGINALLY CAME IN THE FORM OF A LOAF. Ferrero originally made his chocolate-hazelnut paste into a loaf designed to be sliced and placed on bread, kind of like a chocolaty version of American cheese slices.
- EACH JAR CONTAINS 52 HAZELNUTS. There are 52 hazelnuts in every 14-ounce jar of Nutella, according to its advertisements. Hazelnuts make up about 13 percent of the product.
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