This roasted almond and chocolate slice is very easy to make and quick. The difference from the more frequent almond cake base is the amazing aroma that comes from having toasted carefully the almond meal!
You will need a 20 x 20 cm slice tin or brownie tin for this slice.
Ingredients:
180 g of caster sugar
4 large eggs (that means from a box of 12 eggs weighting 700 g min)
200 g of almond meal
A few drops of good vanilla extract
100 g of melted butter (I use salted butter, the choice is yours)
Chocolate top: 150 g of dark chocolate and 70 g of butter
Method:
Heat up the oven to 170°C.
Place the almond meal in a large thick based frypan on medium to high heat (no need for anything else!). While constantly moving the almond meal around slowly with a wooden spoon or wooden spatula, allow it to toast to a nice golden brown. Remove from the heat when you reach the colour and immediately transfer to a bowl (else the almond meal will further darken). Careful, this is hot.
In a food mixer with the whisk (or by hand with a wide whisk!), whisk together sugar and eggs until light and fluffy like a mousse.
Add the vanilla extract.
Slow down the speed of the mixer if using one. Add the melted butter. Then add the roasted almond meal once it has cooled down.
Line the tray with baking paper (use a bit of butter to help it stick well on the sides). Pour the bottom mix into the slice tin.
Bake until light brown (you can insert a skewer to check or simply press the top of the base with the tip of your fingers, it will slightly spring back). Remove from the oven. Leave in the tray.
Melt the chocolate and 70 g of butter. Once melted, mix until smooth, then pour over the base and use a spatula to spread across the base.
Leave to cool until set. If you are short of time, place the tray in the freezer for 20 minutes.
Cut into slices. The slices keep well for a few days in an air-tight container. Do not refrigerate.
It was a weekend in chocolate, I have been watching people speaking about making their own chocolate. I had purchased some time ago some cocoa butter, so I thought I may as well use it.
This is when I realise most homemade chocolate blog discussions are by raw food fans
So you try to understand what you should be doing and the first thing you get is all these fancy ingredients: cacao (and raw please) and not cocoa, sweeteners of all kinds, oils of various types, and of course cocoa or cacao butter. Waho!!! Hello Moon, this is raw food land! I don’t mind raw food people (up to them – and you will see my next recipe is a yummy raw food bar !) but I don’t see the benefit of fancy ingredients with higher environmental and socio-economical costs for the sake of it.
So let us remain on basic ingredients, I used:
Cocoa powder (dutch cocoa)
Cocoa butter
Icing sugar and/or honey
Nuts
Plus a range of ingredients through trials and errors as you will read below
Cacao on the left, dutch cocoa on the right
Cocoa versus Cacao
The french for cocoa is cacao. But this is not the focus here, just something to muddle up everything. English speakers call it -if I get it right – cacao powder, the powder obtained by the drying and grounding of the cocoa beans after extraction of the oil (cacao butter) without any need for roasting the beans. At this stage, I must say, I am not too sure of the last statement, I found two variations of what preparation involves online (a little or not at all). Cocoa powder is obtained after drying and grounding to a powder the remaining of the cocoa beans after it has been roasted and pressed to remove the oil (cocoa butter).
And what is dutch cocoa? Cocoa is naturally quite acidic, a process of neutralisation called the dutch process (designed by a Dutch man) aims at neutralising the acidity. This brings the colour to a deep dark and the neutrality of the powder makes it easier for baking and other chocolate processes.
Making your chocolate, proportions
The next thing I had to sort out are the relative quantity of cocoa butter to cocoa powder and sugar. Keep in mind that the mass of cocoa powder and cocoa butter makes your percentage of cocoa in your chocolate.
One last thing, cocoa butter is an oil, only called butter because it solidifies just below 30 degrees (celcius).
Dark chocolate
In other words for a 60% cocoa solids chocolate, you have 40% sugar and the rest is a range of possibility of cocoa butter and cocoa powder.
To be honest, my measurements soon became alchemy and tasting became the rule.
For the nuts same thing, it is pretty much up to you. The less, the cheaper from a manufacturer’s point of view of course. I tended to put way more than what recipes called for.Pl I found it was nicer by roasting the nuts slightly, especially the hazelnuts. You will need to remove their skins too.
Milk Chocolate
Dark chocolate contains milk solids. I must say that at this stage my attempts were not very successful, the powdered milk did not want to dissolve and with the icing sugar it seems too much for the cocoa butter which became a few times a solid mass. So I added more melted cocoa butter, I tried vegetable oils, passed it through sieves,….
My attempts at milk chocolate were always grainy and not very satisfying.
What I learnt?
I learnt that chocolate making can be messy very quickly. When it works, it is very rewarding. I find that I don’t know enough to post a whole recipe, there are many aspects of chocolate making which I would love to understand better. If anyone knows a good class in Sydney, I am happy to go there!
Milk chocolate is not easy, probably because we don’t have the ingredients to the level of quality and thinness than professionals have access to.
The cocoa butter taste is quite strong and in many eating chocolate block, there is a fair amount of other vegetable oils.
Some dark couverture chocolate have some butter and concentrated milk. This is the case for the Lindt bittersweet (58%). I tried adding a little butter to a couple tablets, it is definitely a winner.
Adding salt bring the taste up. You don’t need a lot.
It is not cheaper to make it yourself except if you are adding a lot of nuts!
Adding honey is easier than adding icing sugar as it does not remain grainy, on the minus side, the chocolate bar is not as brittle.
Trying to transform the sugar into caramel and adding it to the cocoa powder and cocoa butter mix did not work.
In the end, you may wonder if there is a reason to do your own chocolate. I can see two really good ones which will make me do it from time to time:
The smooth feeling of the dark chocolate and the development to the taste of your choice
It is fun!
But to be honest, I am quite happy to buy good quality couverture chocolate! And no, we didn’t eat all this at once. It actually stayed in the fridge for quite some times until the good photo camera came back home, then it surely disappeared through flocks of kids and grown ups.
