Sunday, 1 April 2007

Chocolate slices that taste expensive

However shameful it might be, I'm not really a huge chocolate lover (yes, this is the place you can go 'nooooo, that can't be true!'). Well I mean drooling because of a chocolate bar or spying on a random chocolate cake to get my hands on it - I don't do things like that (although I'm a woman. weird, huh?). But what I do love is expensive interestingly flavoured chocolate. And what I love even more is when I manage to turn some cheap chocolate into a sweet that tastes the same.

There's nothing crazy nor difficult about it. The simplest way to add a wow-effect to chocolate is to melt it and flavour it. Thin pieces also give their effort - when it doesn't look just like another ordinary chocolate bar, it couldn't be one, right? One brand I used had pieces of nuts in it too, the crunchy effect was like a bonus in the chocolate. So you can add bits of nuts too if you like.


Chocolate slices with pinches of cinnamon and salt

100 g milk chocolate
100 g dark chocolate
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/5 tsp salt

1. Melt the chocolate in a waterbath.
2. Add cinnamon and salt, blend well. Spread the chocolate onto parchment paper or aluminum foil (I have a silicone baking sheet that's probably the best choice).
3. Cool it to some stage so you can cut shapes out of the chocolate with a cookie cutter or cool it completely and just break it to pieces for serving (that's what I did and it looks nice. Plus some small pieces may break and you can lie to yourself you have to eat them to get rid of the mess).

If you're afraid of adding salt, just add less. You really won't regret. I wouldn't add notably more, too much salt wouldn't complete the taste anymore, it would overpower it. This amount, to me, seems to be just about right to tease your senses. Though I haven't tried, I believe this chocolate could make an excellent sauce to a sweet chocolate cake. In the future I'd also like to try adding herbs to flavour chocolate. The opportunities are endless.
And, of course, I have to try this recipe using an expensive chocolate. Consider it done.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like your idea of mixing dark and milk chocolate in this. Talking of flavoured chocolate, I did once try chocolate with a hint of curry powder and it was surprisingly good!

Evelin said...

Thank you. I often mix milk and dark chocolate when I feel dark chocolate would be too...dark. Milk chocolate is not really my thing, the mixture is more like it!
And curry powder? Never would have thought about it. Something to try!