Especially for V-day: kitchen non-love

This weekend we had the in-laws over for dinner (coucou Paul!).

MiL brought the starters; for mains we had a sausage and bean casserole. For dessert, I decided to make these salted caramel chocolate pots. I have a weakness for salted caramel, started by some now-impossible-to-find Cote d’Or salted carmalised almond milk chocolate bars.

I saw these in the February edition of Good Food magazine. The original recipe is:

4 tablespoons of dulce de leche or canned caramel (we used Carnation)

½ teaspoon of sea salt, plus extra to serve

85g EACH of dark and milk chocolate

1-2 grissini

2 tablespoons demerara sugar

100ml double cream

50ml milk

I used a small tin of condensed milk. In my ignorance, I figured this was the same as canned caramel. I thought at the time that it was a bit liquid, and wondered how it was meant to support the weight of the chocolate. It wasn’t going to support it. However, the result was visually lovely, as the lighter milk enrobed the chocolate. 

The second mistake was the salt. I measured this very carefully, even using a very precise measurer, in order not to over-salt the caramel. School girl mistake. I should have paid more attention to the type of salt I used. Instead of taking normal sea salt, I used some very exotic Himalayan salt. It is uber-potent, and far too salty. The salt overpowered the whole dessert and many were returned, barely touched. Oh well. Live n learn.

IF (if…) I were to make this again, I would make a caramel sauce, using butter, sugar and cream, and add a little bit of salt. The chocolate bit was fine.

One final thing, these are very, very rich. I divided mine among 10 shot glasses.