Sometimes you feel like eating all of the chocolate in the world. But other days, you just need a snack. Today being National Chocolate Covered Nut Day, I'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite snacks: small-batch chocolate covered salted cashews.
Chocolate covered nuts are in fact a great snack, because they have enough nut that you can call them health food but enough chocolate so that they are pleasurable.
My favorite nut to coat in chocolate is cashews. This is for a few reasons. I'll tell you a few of them right now:
1. You often see commercial confections featuring chocolate and almonds or peanuts. I've never seen a candy bar or commercial treat featuring cashews, have you?
2. If you go to a confectionery shop, you'll probably see chocolate-almond bark, you'll probably see pecan turtles, but rarely will you see a chocolate cashew treat.
3. If you go to a bakery and they offer brownies with nuts, chances are the nuts in question are pecans or walnuts. I've never seen a cashew brownie at a bakery.
What I am getting at here is that chocolate-cashew is for some reason not an exceedingly popular flavor combo. I don't really see why, because there is so much to love about the combo: the mellow, creamy-buttery cashew flavor is the perfect complement to chocolate. I prefer cashews with milk chocolate because it makes the flavor combo extra-creamy, and I prefer to use roasted/salted cashews, because I like a little crunch to the texture and I am basically addicted to salt.
So, for National Chocolate Covered Nut Day, I'd like to make some chocolate covered cashews, and I'd like you to know how I do it so you can recreate the magic at home.
This batch is perfectly sized to provide a few servings, but not such a huge batch that the nuts are going to go stale or the chocolate is going to get all weird and bloomed before you've devoured them.
Small batch chocolate salted cashews
makes about 30
- 2 ounces of milk or dark chocolate
- about 30 medium or large salted, roasted cashews
Melt the chocolate. I like to do this in the microwave, in 20 second increments on high, until mostly melted. Give it a stir and any residual solid bits should melt into the mixture.
Toss 3-4 cashews in at a time, and turn them to coat, using a fork. Using the same fork, remove, let excess chocolate drip off, and place on a sheet of parchment or silicone to completely "set".
Store in a single layer to prevent the cashews from melting into one another, or if you don't care about that, just put them in a bag.