Salted Caramel Choccy Nutty Crunch
These are a great homemade gift idea and look gorgeous wrapped in cellophane and ribbon. Please read the recipe thoroughly before starting – it isn’t complicated, but you need to make sure you follow it exactly!
Ingredients:
200g golden caster sugar
35g chopped roasted hazelnuts
35g toasted flaked almonds
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
100g dark chocolate
Method:
1) Grease a baking tray
2) Measure the sugar directly into a saucepan.
3) Measure out your nuts (hee hee)!! I’ve included a picture of what the packets look like that I bought. It is much easier and quicker to buy your nuts ready roasted/toasted, but if you can’t find them, then just buy regular chopped hazelnuts and flaked almonds and dry roast them in a frying pan.
4) Melt your sugar over a low heat. This is NOT a quick process. You will need to swirl your pan to make sure that all the sugar melts and you will need to be watching to check it doesn’t burn…oh and did I mention that you must not stir the sugar??? However, to make it easier for you, I include pictures charting the melting process:
5) Once the sugar has completely melted add the salt.
6) Working very quickly, add and stir your nuts 🙂
7) Hopefully, you will have read this recipe before you have started making this, because you need to know that from now on, you must be on super speed…using two lightly oiled teaspoons, spoon blobs of the mixture onto your greased baking tray and flatten them slightly. This mixture is already setting as you are doing this, so your aim must be to get every bit of mixture out of the pan before it sets….go go go!!!!!!!
8) Once all the mixture is ‘blobbed’ put your saucepan in the sink to soak with washing up liquid and hot water. Believe me, if you don’t, you will have caramel in your pan FOREVER!!!!
9) Leave the caramel to set at room temperature for approximately an hour.
10) After an hour, melt 75g of your dark chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water.
11) Once melted, stir in the remaining 25g of chocolate and take the pan off the heat.
12) Once that is all melted, put the pan, back on the heat to slightly warm the chocolate. (You may think this all sounds like a faff, but what this is doing is tempering the chocolate. This is so that you end up with nice glossy chocolate that snaps when you crunch it, instead of dull soft chocolate…trust me!)
13) Turn your ‘blobs’ over, so the flat side is facing up and using a teaspoon, add a dollop of chocolate to each blob!
14) Leave these to set at room temperature for approximately an hour.
Note: Ok so these are not the quickest things to make in the world, but they are so worth it!!! And they are so very easy to make! Much more delicious than a chocolate bar and a little bit sophisticated too 😉