At Christmas the shops are full of fancy chocolates that sometimes delight but often disappoint. If you’re already following a lower sugar diet, the high sugar content of commercial confectionary can mask the flavour of the ingredients. So, if I want a really good chocolate hit without the sugar I find it easier to make my own.
The recipe below is a great way to end a meal and can work well as a hostess gift too. Plus it’s a great way to use up all the little bags of nuts and seeds and dried fruit that accumulate in the kitchen – as long as they are still in date!
Ingredients
(For a 20 x 30 cm shallow baking tin)
- 2 x 100g bars dark chocolate. Here, I used a 70% and an 85%
- 100g mixed nuts, seeds and dried fruits. Here I used
- cranberries
- raisins
- whole hazelnuts
- chopped pecans
- almond flakes
- pumpkin seeds
- a sprinkling of sea salt
Method
- Line the baking tin with parchment, including up the sides.
- Arrange the various nuts and fruits evenly across the space.
- Melt the chocolate by your favourite method. I used a clean frying pan on a very low heat and waited patiently until the lumps had just disappeared.
- Pour the chocolate carefully across all of the baking tin, making sure you go right up to the edges. Then bang the tin gently on the worktop a couple of times to make sure the chocolate sinks to the bottom.
- Finally sprinkle a pinch of good quality sea salt over the top to add a bit of extra palette zing.
- Store in a cool dry place – not in the fridge.
- When it’s cool – about 2-3 hours – I find it’s best to break up the pieces by hand, rather than cutting them up.
Variations
You can limit your taste palette if you want to be more sophisticated. Orange peel and walnut works well, cranberry and pecan, apricot and almond. You can also add some spice in the form of cinnamon bark, fennel seeds, cumin seeds etc. And, of course, you could marble the finished product by melting a small amount of white chocolate separately and drizzling on at stage 4a. The permutations are endless!
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