MomentsbyPeach: Chocolate Salame (yes, it's a thing)

Time for another Nigella-inspired lactofree dessert endavour. I kept skimming past this one but after much hinting from the man the idea of a Chocolate Salami hit home. How great a concept is that!

Naturally, like everything over the past year it had to be adapted to the lactofree option. Fortunately with more and more great products becoming easily available it shouldn't be a problem!

So for a chunky Salame you'll need:

250g Min 70% Dark Chocolate

250g Rich Tea Biscuits

100g Lactofree Butter

(Arla's lactofree option is great, or you can use Dairy-free soya options)

150g Caster Sugar

3 Large Eggs

2x 15ml Tblspn of Amaretto Liqueur

2x 15ml Tblspn Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

75g Natural Almonds (unskinned) Chopped

75g Hazlenuts Roughly Chopped

1-2x 15ml Tblspn Icing Sugar

String

Cling-film

Start by breaking the dark chocolate into chunks and melting it. I used a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Looks so tempting, but don't give in to temptation just yet (it's worth the wait!).

While your chocolate melts stuff the tea-biscuits into a sandwich bag and bash it up until you have bits of biscuit rubble. You don't want it to go completely powdery though so take it easy.

When you have gooey chocolate put it somewhere cool to chill (not the fridge, just away from the stove or maybe even outside for a bit).

Then get the butter and sugar mixed up in a bowl. After this add the eggs (mixture may look a bit off here, it gets better). After the egg it's liquor time, add this and mix well.

Then grab your cooled-down melted chocolate, sieve the cocoa powder and mix it up. Then add this into the big mixture too.

Then mix up the chopped nuts and crushed biscuits.

Mix until it's all a crunchy gooey chocolatey mess. Then it's time for this to go into the fridge for 25 minutes of so.

Grab some cling-film, roll it out, and drop the mixture in the centre.

Roll it up into a salame-style chun, and once it's a nice even size twist up the ends. Then it's time to leave it in the fridge over night (or as per Nigelissima a minimum of six hours).

So when you get it out it should be fairly solid. Measure out string that is six times longer than the length of the salame. Tie one end around the twisted end and one you're happy that's set cut away the rest of the clingfilm.

It should look something like this.

Then it's time to dust it up with the icing sugar for that salame look. Then it's all about looping up the string, taking one loop at a time around it and tying it before making another. Then keep this up back and forth until you're happy with both the look.