Thursday, July 16, 2009

Heroes in a Half Shell


What should you do with a handful of walnuts? Well, you could make a nice pesto for a healthy dinner but, what the hell, let's cover them with dulce de leche and chocolate! These aren't exactly turtles because a) they're made with walnuts instead of pecans, b) they're made with only one nut each, and, c) they're made with dulce de leche instead of caramel. But no matter, they're delicious for bite-sized fun at the movies.


Lay out 15-20 walnut halves on baking sheet lined with wax paper. Warm up 1/4 c. dulce de leche in the microwave for no more than 30 seconds to thin it. Spoon a small, but substantial!, amount onto each nut and let it set for 30 minutes. Sprinkle the tiniest bit of salt over each. The dld will still be sticky but will harden up a bit. Warm up 100 grams of roughly chopped semi-sweet chocolate either in a double boiler (must be small) or in the microwave (stir every 15 seconds) until smooth. You can either drizzle the chocolate on top or you can go for the dip - which I did since I thought it would make them less sticky. Allow to cool in the refrigerator and remove once hardened. I let them sit out and become room temperature before tossing them into a bag to sneak into the movie theater.


And don't worry, I made these with light chocolate to lighten the guilt, so we're cool.

3 comments:

Katie said...

Why did I not think of this?! Genius! I will be making these ASAP. Friends of Daniel's family have a walnut tree, so we have tons of walnuts that we got for free.

meag said...

Awesome! Especially since nuts don't come cheap down here. I didn't think of this until now but it might be tasty to toast the walnuts a bit - it may add an extra dimension of flavor.

Katie said...

Ah, good call on toasting the walnuts. Hey, have you ever seen macadamia nuts here? I love those.