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Chocolate Mendiants – great gift idea
These are a very easy way of making home-made gifts to give to friends and family for Christmas or Birthdays or for when you’re feeling generous. Chocolate mendiants are essentially chocolate buttons adorned with edible jewels of your liking. You could tailor both the chocolate and the toppings to suit different tastes – very dark chocolate, fruits and nuts for the chocolate lover or white/milk chocolate with hundreds and thousands or other sweeties for something fun. Choose a decent brand of chocolate (such as Green and Blacks) for best effects.
Preparation:
Melt chocolate in a bowl placed over a pan of barely simmering water. Once melted, use a teaspoon to drop the melted chocolate onto a baking tray lined with non-stick parchment so that it creates small rounds approximately the size of a 2p piece. You can choose whatever size you like. Put the toppings of your choice on top. It’s best to do a few at a time to prevent them setting before you’ve put all toppings on. Once you’ve adorned several chocolate rounds, start to make the next few.
Allow to set. You can place the tray in the fridge briefly if you wish. Once set, gently lift the mendicants from the tray using a blunt knife and place in small kilner jars, old jam jars or small confectionary bags decorated with a ribbon.
Topping ideas:
Date and walnut, stem ginger, raisin and almond, sour cherry and pistachio, apricot + pumpkin seed, prune, sea salt (works quite well with chocolate!), chilli flakes (just a few!), hundreds and thousands, cocoa nibs, hazelnuts, chocolate coated coffee beans. Maya Gold Green and Blacks would also work really well with candied peel for a citrus-spice hit, mmm.
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