Recipe: Taruna's Chocolate Nut Bar

Taruna Deepak offers up her yum chocolate recipe for those who would love to start the week on a sweet note.

Her lovely Chocolate Nut Bar filled with the nuts and more and is very easy and uncomplicated to make.

The condensed milk helps bind the mixture together in the absence of eggs and you can get your kids to decorate the bar with tiny hearts of icing sugar.

Taruna's recipes are less on sugar, veer towards to healthy and vegetarian.

Chocolate Nut Bar

Servings: 1

Ingredients

• 100 gm butter
• 2 tbsp condensed milk
• 120 gm dark chocolate slab, preferably 45 per cent cocoa
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 14 Marie biscuits
• 75 gm walnuts or any nuts of your choice
• 2 tbsp Kahlua coffee liqueur, optional
• Icing sugar, for dusting
• Cocoa powder, for dusting, please see the note below
• Zip-lock bag or parchment paper
• Water

Method

• Roughly chop the chocolate.
  Keep aside.
• Place the biscuits inside a zip-lock bag or between two sheets of parchment paper.
  Crush it using a rolling pin until you get small and coarse crumbs.
  Keep aside.
• Roughly chop the walnuts and nuts of your choice.
  Toast them in a frying pan over medium-low heat till they emit a nice toasty aroma.
  Take out of the pan and keep aside.
• Add the chopped chocolate, butter, cocoa powder, condensed milk in a heatproof bowl and set it over a saucepan of simmering water placed on medium heat.
  Stir everything and add the Kahlua.
  Once everything comes together to form a smooth chocolate mix, take the the bowl off the pan of water and stir in the biscuit crumbs and the walnuts.
  Allow the mixture to cool for approximately 20 to 30 minutes.
  Spread the mixture onto a large piece of baking paper or foil or cling/plastic wrap.
  Roll to shape like a log.
  Scrunch the ends tightly and chill the log in the fridge for at least 5 hours but preferably overnight.
  Take the log out of the fridge and unwrap.
  Dust some icing sugar and/or cocoa powder over the log, coating it all over.
  Dust off the excess.
  Traditionally icing sugar is used but cocoa powder works just as good and may be even better at times.
  Slice and serve.

Taruna's Note: I mostly use 55 per cent cocoa chocolate, but this time I had 45 per cent cocoa chocolate with me. Therefore, I used cocoa powder to counter the sweetness (since I prefer my desserts less sweet). You can skip the cocoa powder if you like your dessert sweet.

Also, you may omit cocoa powder from the recipe if you are using chocolate above 55 to 60 per cent cocoa.

If you are making it for kids, skip the Kahlua.

Check the log after 45 minutes to check if it has retained its shape (it can sometimes flatten a bit). If not, simply take it out and while it is still inside the wrap, roll it gently to bring it back to shape and refrigerate again.

Taruna Deepak lives in Mumbai and is the creator of the food blog Easyfoodsmith.

• REDIFF RECIPES