Whisky Caramel Chocolates

“A moorish late evening indulgence.”

Whisky Caramel Chocolates

“For almond fans, a sweet and boozy truffle with strong flavour and firm texture.”

Ingredients

  • 40g dark soft brown sugar
  • 60g light brown muscovado sugar
  • 300g milk chocolate (60g for ganache, the rest for dipping)
  • 100ml double cream
  • 100g unsalted butter
  • 3g Maldon sea salt

Makes approx. 60 subtly boozy chocolates.

Whisky Caramel Chocolates

Inspiration

Sharing

The chocolates I make are often shared around at work during my day job. To let people know I’ve made something, I’ll typically spend a good while taking a photo of it, and try to present it as if I was going to sell it. These Whisky Caramel Chocolates are the result of trial and one serious error (see below).

This shameless showing off happens through the company Email system, and send them it to the whole company. Thing is, our company is now spread out across two sites, so typically the other site was getting to see the images, but not the chocolates. Apparently the fact that I was torturing the other staff was worthy of bringing up in a company meeting.

Well, I don’t need much of an excuse to get the chocolate out. Why not make something that was just for the other office (and of course, some to keep for myself)? There are lots of recipes around for creating salted caramel ganache, all subtly different, and to put my own stamp on it – lets add whisky.

Easy on the salt

Maldon sea salt is recommended in a number of cookery books. The idea is that it has a cleaner taste. Please email me if you know what that means. Well, I added just 10 grams to my caramel. Now I like salty food, but this was a different level. Regardless, I then piped this ganache into 80 white chocolate shells I had airbrush decorated, thinking that the sweet of the white would balance things out. The result – they tasted, if anything, even saltier. The whole lot went in the bin. Tragedy. A chocolate crime.

Keylink (a Chocolatier one stop shop here in the UK) can supply chocolate shells that you can just pipe a ganache straight into. If you’ve just turned a load of chocolate shells into the bin, and starting from scratch all over again, seems daunting, these are ideal. Is it cheating? Well, yes. A bit. Main thing here was to perfect the ganache, so I decided I would just use these, then cap them off and dip in milk chocolate.

The question, how much salt to use? Perhaps just normal whisky caramel chocolates are fine after all? Well, I went for it again. Just 3 grams this time, and that’s easily enough. The salt is not for everyone. If even a gram would be too much for you, of course you can omit the salt completely.

Thanks

So I sent these in the post to the other office, and got a thank you email back. Which was nice. Better still, I’d kept ½ for myself and friends. The caramel is very rich. This is another strong chocolate for sure, but I’d certainly do these again. Alarming just how many you can get through when you’re just sat watching a movie at night.

Instructions

  1. Melt butter, sugar and salt in a medium saucepan over medium heat until simmering, set timer for 5 minutes. Will emulsify and become glossy.
  2. Remove from the heat and carefully add the cream, whisk until fully mixed together.
  3. Add the chocolate and whisk until all of it is melted.
  4. Gently warm the whisky so that it is a similar temperature to the mixture.
  5. Gradually add it to the caramel and whisk each time to fully incorporate it.
  6. Allow it to cool to room temp.
  7. Fill pre-made shells, and allow to crust over during the night.
  8. Cap of shells.
  9. Dip in tempered milk chocolate and decorate.

Next Time

Perhaps a bit more whisky. Also, I’d changed some of the sugar from the original recipe to muscovado sugar. I don’t know what this did for the caramel because I don’t have anything else to compare it to, so perhaps just soft brown next time. Oh, and very great care with the salt! In fact, the caramel is so good anyway, the salt really is optional.