The husband gave me a year of BakeOn! Kits for Christmas and this Hazelnut Salted Caramel Hearts Candies is my second box. It was as much fun, if not more than my first box with which I made a Raspberry Lemon Dome Entremet. Both boxes offered me the opportunity to make something I had never made before and I learned some new skills.
The BakeOn! Kit boxes provide most of the ingredients you need to make the treat – obviously they can’t send things like dairy products and fresh fruit. You also end up with some tools for your kitchen like molds, a bench knife, etc.
I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Hazelnut Salted Caramel Hearts Candies
This was a fun experience. And tasty if I do say so myself. Who doesn’t love chocolate and salted caramel? Not to mention the lovely crunch of a bit of nuts. I suspect if you started early you could get it done in one day but I am never one for starting anything early so my candies were made over the course of two days.
First up was decorating the heart shaped mold with the red cocoa butter. This was a do as you please kind of exercise and you could add as little or as much as you wanted.
After that dried a layer of dark chocolate was poured in and then allowed to drip out so that only a coating remained. This had to fully harden. While that was happening I candied the hazelnuts.
That was a very simple process; chop, make a simple syrup, coat the pieces and toast up in the oven. Now they were ready to be placed in the chocolates.
The next step was to make the salted caramel. Is there anything better than salted caramel. Yum! This is a process of melting sugar just right then adding butter, heavy cream and salt. Might had a few lumps (sigh) so I just strained it before use. No harm, no foul. Things happen.
Adaptation is key in the kitchen.
Finishing the Candies
The salted caramel was piped in over the nuts, the mold was tapped a few times to let everything settle and then more melted chocolate was added to seal the candies. A bench knife was used to scrape the excess off and then the mold was set aside to fully dry overnight.
Once the candies were hard I unmolded them. Aren’t they pretty? Then they were wrapped in gold candy papers for storage.
I will admit that these salted caramel hazelnut candies are very tasty. The salted caramel is a perfect foil for the dark chocolate and the hazelnuts add a perfect bit of crunch.
I am looking forward to what comes in the next BakeOn! Kit.
