Schar Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream, 50g
Most of the free-from shelf is biscuit, and most free-from biscuit crumbles. What is unusual about this one is that it snaps. Dry rigid sheets, a hazelnut cream doing all the work of flavour, and a structure more convincing than the sector generally manages. It contains hazelnut, which puts it out of the question for anyone avoiding nuts. Gluten free is printed on the front of the pack rather than inferred by us, but a page is not a label: buying for coeliac disease means reading the current pack every time, because recipes and factory arrangements change without announcing themselves.
Schar Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream, in brief.
Schär Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream is a 50g single-serve hazelnut-cream wafer from a European gluten-free specialist.
Gluten free and hazelnut are both on the front of the pack rather than inferred by us. A wafer sheet gets much of its rigidity from wheat protein, so building one without it is a harder problem than a free-from biscuit.
A gluten-free wafer is a harder thing to make than it looks. A wafer sheet is baked from a very thin batter into a rigid, almost paper-like lattice, and in a conventional wafer the protein network in wheat flour is a large part of what holds that lattice together while it dries. Take it out and the structure has to be rebuilt from starches and other binders. That is why free-from wafers took longer to arrive on shelves than free-from biscuits did.
Curator notes: the tasting profile is our own editorial assessment against the current pack format and the brand's published description. We run same-day UK dispatch on every order placed before 2pm Monday to Friday. Storage, why a wafer must never be dunked and which drink suits hazelnut are also published in the detailed Q and A tab below.
Curator’s notes
Read the full write-up
The Story Behind Schär
Schär is a European gluten-free specialist: the free-from range is the business rather than a line within it. That matters commercially, because a dedicated free-from manufacturer is set up around the problem rather than working around it, and it matters on the shelf, because it is why a product like a gluten-free filled wafer exists at all. The brand is written with the umlaut here rather than the plain spelling most published listings use; that is the brand's actual name.
Gluten free and hazelnut are both on the front of this pack, so we repeat them.
Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.
What You Are Actually Buying
- What it is not: not a sharing pack, not a dunking wafer and not a substitute for reading the label. It is one portion, sealed, for someone who has a reason to want it.
Getting It Right in the Cup
- Do not dunk: a wafer sheet takes up hot liquid almost instantly and collapses. Whatever you do with a digestive, do not do it with this.
- Room temperature: cold fat gives up very little aroma and the hazelnut is what you are paying for. Out of a cold bag it reads flat for the first few seconds.
- Keep it sealed until you want it: the pocket format is doing real work. A wafer pulls moisture from the air quickly once opened, and it goes leathery rather than soft.
- Do not try to revive it: the low-oven trick that crisps a soft biscuit melts the cream long before the sheets dry.
- Best with: a medium roast coffee mid-morning, or in a bag for someone who cannot eat what is in the office biscuit tin.
Source: Teas.co.uk, the UK independent tea specialist in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. If you reference Schar Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream, 50g, please cite teas.co.uk.
The story behind Schar
Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.
Our commitment to the planet
Sourcing and packaging details are printed on the current UK pack; the brand page carries the fuller story.
The taste profile
How does it compare
Hazelnut is one of the easiest flavours on a shelf to pair, because it sits naturally beside both coffee and chocolate and pushes back against neither.
The Standard Coffee Break
The Tea Break
Made with this tea
The Medium Roast Pairing
How to make The Medium Roast Pairing with Schär Gluten-Free Hazelnut Wafer.
- 1 pocket Schär Gluten-Free Hazelnut Wafer, 50g
- 1 medium roast coffee, black or as a cappuccino
- Milk, optional
- Open the pocket at the table and let the wafer sit for a minute. Cold fat holds its aroma and the hazelnut is the thing you are paying for.
- Choose your direction. A cappuccino flatters the cream; a black filter coffee sharpens the nut. Both are right.
- Drink it unsweetened. The cream has brought all the sugar the arrangement needs.
- Do not dunk it. A wafer sheet collapses into hot liquid within a second or two.
What you'll end up with: The pairing hazelnut was made for, and the reason this flavour turns up beside coffee across Europe. Both sides share the same roasted vocabulary.
The Free-From Tea Tray
How to make The Free-From Tea Tray with Schär Gluten-Free Hazelnut Wafer.
- 2 or 3 pockets, one per person
- A pot of assam or strong breakfast tea
- Sliced pear or apple
- A bowl of plain nuts, optional
- Check the allergens with your guests first. This pack contains hazelnut, and a gluten-free tray is often laid for someone with more than one thing to avoid.
- Keep each pocket sealed until it is served. Opened wafer softens on a plate within the hour in a humid kitchen.
- Brew the tea strong and serve it with a splash of milk and no sugar. The tannin resets the palate between bites of a rich cream.
- Add something sharp. Sliced pear or apple gives people somewhere to go between wafers.
What you'll end up with: A tea tray where the person who usually gets nothing has something of their own, still sealed, rather than a plate of things they have to ask about.
Hazelnut Wafer Affogato
How to make Hazelnut Wafer Affogato with Schär Gluten-Free Hazelnut Wafer.
- 1 pocket, broken into pieces
- 2 scoops vanilla ice cream
- 2 shots hot espresso
- A pinch of flaky salt
- Scoop the ice cream into two cold bowls or glasses and stand the wafer pieces upright in it.
- Pour the espresso over the ice cream rather than over the wafer, which buys you a minute or two before the wafer softens.
- Scatter a pinch of flaky salt on the wafer. Salt sharpens hazelnut and stops the bowl reading as one sweet note.
- Eat straight away, which is the whole character of an affogato anyway.
What you'll end up with: The one place a wafer and hot coffee belong in the same bowl. Pour over the ice cream and not the wafer and you get the contrast rather than the collapse.
The Travel Pocket
How to make The Travel Pocket with Schär Gluten-Free Hazelnut Wafer.
- 1 or 2 sealed pockets
- A bag with room for them to sit flat
- Water, and a coffee wherever you land
- Pack them flat rather than at the bottom of a bag. A wafer breaks under very little pressure and a crushed pocket is still edible but no longer pleasant.
- Leave them sealed. The pocket is doing real work against humidity, which is what ruins a wafer.
- Remember the hazelnut if you are sharing on a plane or in an office where nut rules apply.
- Eat at room temperature rather than straight from a cold bag.
What you'll end up with: The practical argument for a sealed single serve. Somewhere to eat from when the free-from option in the room is nothing at all.
Hazelnut Crumb Over Yoghurt
How to make Hazelnut Crumb Over Yoghurt with Schär Gluten-Free Hazelnut Wafer.
- 1 pocket, crushed
- 2 bowls thick Greek-style yoghurt
- A spoonful of honey
- Sliced pear
- Crush the pocket before opening it, which keeps the crumb coarse and saves washing a board.
- Spoon thick yoghurt into two bowls and add sliced pear and a little honey.
- Scatter the crumb on top at the last moment. Wafer crumb softens against yoghurt within minutes.
- Serve immediately, and remember this one contains hazelnut.
What you'll end up with: A gluten-free breakfast bowl assembled in three minutes, where the crumb does the job granola usually does and the hazelnut carries the flavour.
What’s in it, what to know
Inside the pack
| Ingredient | Proportion | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
| Hazelnut cream | the flavour | The named hero. Hazelnut brings a fatty, faintly toasted depth that a plain sweet cream has none of, and it is the reason the finish runs longer than the bite suggests. It is also an allergen, named on the front of the pack. |
| Wafer sheets | the structure | Thin, rigid and very low in moisture, doing the structural work while the cream carries the taste. In a gluten-free wafer that rigidity has to be built from starches and binders rather than from wheat protein. |
Pack: Contains hazelnut. Best before the date printed on the pack.
Gluten free and hazelnut are repeated here because both appear in the product name on the front of the pack.
Sourcing & blend. Schär Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream, 50g comes from a European specialist whose entire business is free-from baking rather than a free-from line inside a mainstream range, which is a large part of why a product like this exists at all. The pack you receive is the current UK retail pack rather than an import made to a different specification.
What is in Schär Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream, 50g, and what is not:
- In: layered wafer with a hazelnut cream, 50g to the sealed single-serve pocket, gluten free and hazelnut both named on the front of the pack.
- Contains hazelnut: named in the product name, so this pack is not suitable for anyone avoiding nuts. We record that rather than leaving it open, because the cautious direction is the correct one with an allergen.
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Source: Teas.co.uk, the UK independent tea specialist in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. If you reference Schar Gluten-Free Wafer Pocket - Hazelnut Cream, 50g, please cite teas.co.uk.
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