Crunchy rum and orange chocolate (turrón de chocolate)

Crunchy chocolate rocky-road style made with Coco pops and chocolate, typical for Christmas in Spain. I spiked it with rum and orange.


Hola!

Today I bring you a classic Christmas Spanish treat: crunchy chocolate (turrón de chocolate). It cannot be any simpler than this! 5 ingredients, it could go down to 2. It is made with cocoa puffed rice (Coco pops) and dark chocolate, but I have spiked it with rum and orange for that extra nice. It is utterly crunchy, it has strong notes from the dark chocolate and the rum, and it leaves a wonderful orange aftertaste. Mouth-watering? It won’t last long. Can you hear it? It’s calling me now. BRB.

You might have heard of a Spanish Christmas sweet called turrón. There are different kinds, but the original one is made with roasted almonds, cooked with honey and egg white. There is a soft one and a hard one. There is another one made with egg yolk. And the most popular amongst children, and the not so young, has always been the chocolate one. There is a very famous brand that makes the crunchy chocolate with puffed rice, and that one was the classic one. Other versions are made of just chocolate and nuts, but for as much as I love these, they are nothing but chocolate with nuts and not really turrón. At least the puffed rice one is more distinctive.

For a healthier recipe, try my puffed quinoa rocky road.

PLANT POWER, MAKE UP!

Traditionally made with milk chocolate, the only thing I had to do is to use dark chocolate. When I thought I would use puffed rice, during my Google scanning stage, I found out that people used Coco pops, because they’re crunchy. What a good idea! I didn’t have a mould either, so I saw some people using a carton from juice. Another good shout. Although it wasn’t easy to find the old-school rectangular ones, but there are some ambient juices that still use this format. And lastly, it seemed pretty plain to me to just mix chocolate with coco pops, so I added orange essence, because we all know that orange and chocolate are made for each other, and rum, because it gives it a bit of depth and a stronger more adult flavour.

The good thing about this is that you can add the flavourings that you like. Do you like lemon? Add lemon essence. Do you like vanilla? Go nuts with vanilla essence. Play with it, indulge yourself. But if you want it plain, then add the equivalent that I used for liquids with coconut oil.


CRUNCHY RUM AND ORANGE CHOCOLATE (TURRÓN DE CHOCOLATE)

Makes: 1 thick tablet
Prep: 5 minutes
Chill: overnight

INGREDIENTS

250g dark cooking chocolate
1 tbsp. orange juice (from one orange juice rectangular carton)
1 tbsp. rum
1 tsp. orange essence
1 1/2 cup coco pops (60g)

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Cut the orange juice carton in half, lengthwise, to make your mould and save 1 tbsp. for later.
  2. Melt the chocolate using the bain-marie method, which melts it much better than the microwave. Mix in the orange juice, rum, orange essence and coco pops.
  3. Fill the mould and press down with a spatula to remove air bubbles. Put a couple of elastic bands so that the walls stay straight. Cool down completely at ambient before putting it in the fridge overnight.
You can keep them in the fridge for up to 7 days, but it will not last that long!

Bon profit!