Snack

Hotel Chocolat Inspired Amaretto-Soaked Sultanas recipe

Name: Hotel Chocolat Inspired Amaretto-Soaked Sultanas
Prep time: 30 min
Yield: 1
Ingredients: 50g sultanas; 85ml amaretto liqueur; 10g almonds (I use skin-on); 100g 40% milk chocolate (broken into pieces); baking paper

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Amaretto-soaked sultanas and crunchy almond pieces, covered in milk chocolate. Inspired by the small, expensive but wonderful tubs from Hotel Chocolat.

Prep30m
Stand1h

chocolate hotel-chocolat

Hotel Chocolat inspired Amaretto soaked sultanas with almond pieces coated in milk chocolate

After the giddy excitement of recreating Hotel Chocolat’s Enrobed Mango, I had to try Amaretto-Soaked Sultanas.

We always have a supply of Amaretto* for Nigella’s Sunken Chocolate Amaretto Cake and if you like the Amaretto-chocolate combo, I can’t recommend this cake enough.

Back to the sultanas. Hotel Chocolat use 40% milk chocolate and small almond pieces for crunch. The process is similar to Enrobed Mango: soak the fruit, melt the chocolate, dunk and dry. It’s more fiddly though. It’s best to coat a few sultanas at a time, otherwise they get lost in the chocolate and you can end up with sultana-less nut clusters.

The sultanas you use are important and Hotel Chocolat use big, chunky ones. My first batch looked far too small because I used Ocado’s own brand sultanas (“small”, “hard” and “currant-like” according to reviews). Spending 15p more on M&S’s Turkish sultanas made a big difference.

★ ★ ★

* Amaretto purchased from Lidl; £10 for 70cl. Much better value than at the big supermarkets.

Recipe credit

Hotel Chocolat's Amaretto Soaked Sultanas

Recipe

Hotel Chocolat Inspired Amaretto-Soaked Sultanas

Prep30m
Stand1h

Serves: 1+

Ingredients

Amaretto soaked sultanas

50g sultanas
85ml amaretto liqueur
10g almonds (I use skin-on)
100g 40% milk chocolate (broken into pieces)

You will need

baking paper

Method

Add 50g of sultanas to a jar and pour in 85ml of Amaretto. Leave to soak overnight.
When the sultanas look plumped up and juicy, crush 10g of almonds in a pestle and mortar until the largest pieces are roughly 2mm in size.
Melt 100g of 40% milk chocolate on the defrost setting in your microwave for 30 seconds at a time. Alternatively, add the chocolate to a bowl and place over a saucepan of boiling water, making sure that the bowl doesn’t touch the water.
Use a spoon to scoop up the larger almond pieces and stir into the melted chocolate (discard any almond powder; I use it elsewhere in yoghurt or cereal).
Tear off a large piece of baking paper and set to one side.
Drain the sultanas and add a few at a time to the melted chocolate. Use a fork to remove the sultanas and place on the baking paper. Repeat until all the sultanas have been coated.
Once the chocolate has set, remove the sultanas from the paper and store in an airtight jar for up to 2 weeks.