Did you miss our Chocolate Buttercream recipe from last week? If so, not to worry, you can catch up right here.
Chillies and oranges are commonly used in chocolate recipes but not always together. We find the tangy and fiery flavours to be a winning combination, so, for your eyes only, let us present our Chili and Orange Dark Chocolate recipe. As we have tried to accomplish with all of our recipes, the steps involved are very straightforward and can be replicated by chocolatiers of all levels and shouldn’t take any longer than half an hour to make. Right, without further ado, let’s head into the kitchen…
Ingredients
220g dark chocolate
2 drops of orange essential oil
A quarter of a tea spoon of ground up chilli flakes (not chilli powder)
Method
The first thing you want to do is set up a bain marie, which although sounds complicated, is actually a simple case of placing a bowl over a pan of simmering water.
With the pan heated at 30°C, place the dark chocolate inside and wait for it to melt. Once it has, set the pan to one side, letting it cool until you begin to see little crystals form on the surface of the chocolate.
When you can begin to see crystals, return the pan to the bain marie. We know this heating, cooling and reheating may seem a bit baffling at first, but this ensures the chocolate is tempered, which ultimately gives the finished product its shiny finish and satisfying snap.
Okay so with the chocolate reheated to 30°C, pour in a couple of drops of the orange essential oil and the chilli flakes, stirring them thoroughly into the mixture as you do so.
Finally, pour the dark mixture onto a tray covered with parchment paper, allowing to cool into an even slab. Snap or cut the finished bar into whatever shapes you like, feel free to get creative (in one of our corporate team building events in London we had a team cut the chocolate into shapes into Sir Alan Sugar’s face!)
[Images provided by pixabay]
