I ended up with ca. 85 chocolates!
Ingredients:
Heads up about some of the ingredients:
- Glycerol and soy lecithin. I just went ahead and and bought 250ml/500ml bottles of the stuff assuming that I'd need it again. When you buy the lecithin, specify that you want soy lecithin. This is what you are most likely going to get, but lecithin can also be extracted from egg yolk... and you want to make sure you get the type you are actually going for.
- I found it pretty hard to find dairy-free nougat. I went to four different stores including a wholesale until I got it. If you're in Germany: Try to get RUF Nuss-Nougat dunkel. You should be able to get this at Kaufland. (If only I had known this before I went on my 3 hour nougat odyssey...)
- When you use margarine/vegetable fat, use a type of fat that is solid at room temperature. I mostly used Sojola (as pictured above) which is more of your conventional "soft out of the fridge" type of margarine. I am assuming that this is why my caramel was very creamy and soft at room temperature. Get coconut oil or a type of margarine that has a consistency similar to butter.
- I didn't buy glucose sirup as suggested in the orignal recipe. I made it myself. 250g of sugar, 250g of water. Cook until the sugar dissolves. Cook a little longer for sirup-y consistency. Add a tiny, tiny bit of lemon juice to avoid crystallization.
On to what you actually need:
For the caramel:
- 250ml of soy cream
- 200g of sugar
- 200g light sirup
- 200g of margarine
- 1 tablespoon of glycerol
- 1 tablespoon of soy lecithin
- 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
- a dash of vanilla flavor
For the rest:
- 250g of nougat
- 100g of chocolate
- lots of yummy hazelnuts
What to do:
- Melt the margarine in a big pot (over low heat).
- Add the soy cream, sugar, sirup, glycerol, lecithin, baking soda, and aroma.
- Stirr well until everything has dissolved.
- Increase heat a bit, stirr continuously.
- Keep stirring until you can see and feel the consistency go from liquid to sticky. As the caramel will (obviously) still be hot, it will be somewhat liquid. Just so you don't expect your regular caramel candy consistency.
- Once you're happy with the caramel, pour it into a silicone pan/plate. A regular deep dish should be sufficient, too, but I found it easier to scrape the caramel out of a silicone pan. And I found a reason to use that silicone pan that came in a set of other silicone liners.
- Allow the caramel to cool down a bit, so you don't burn yourself when you work with it.
- Get out your awesome silicone chocolate molds. I use three different types. You can get them for a few Euros online.
- Fill the molds halfway with the caramel. Make a little dent into using your finger and add one hazelnut.
- I put the molds in the freezer for a bit to get the caramel ready for the nougat.
- Heat up the nougat a bit, add a tea spoon (or less... whatever you can fit in) of nougat into each mold.
- Let the chocolates cool down. Maybe freeze them. I found it the easiest to get them out of the mold when the were frozen.
- Once you have put together caramel, hazelnut, and nougat, you can now move on to add a tiny bit of molten chocolate.
DONE! Enjoy your chocolates. They also make awesome gifts. Who doesn't like to get home made chocolates?
I bought some tiny cupcake liners (for the mini size) because my caramel is a little too soft. This way, I can give it away with being afraid of having the chocolates stick together. The whole thing isn't rocket science, but it takes quite a bit of time. So don't try to do this an hour before you need to go somewhere.
