Christmas Baking, Day 6

So, so close!! Yay!

I’ve nearly finished all of my Christmas shopping, put the decorations up (even in the office) and am now just waiting to get giving!

Today’s recipe comes all the way from Romania where one of my colleagues is from! She was telling me stories about fond memories that she associates with this lovely, easy recipe; Christmas nights eating this sweet treat with family and let me tell you: this is so easy and yummy that you will want to make it every year.

Chocolate and biscuits in the traditional Salam de Biscuiti, a no-baking-required recipe that is great for making with the kids – provided you don’t mind them getting a bit messy – is a delicious combination, which can also be made even more Christmassy with the addition of dried fruits, nuts, mint or orange, or another type of biscuit! As the name entails, it’s a chocolate ‘salami’ that you roll up and can cut into little portions; perfect for sharing with your family and friends with a nice hot cup of tea or even a glass of Mulled Wine.

Now, for this recipe you will need…

• 300 g butter biscuits (perhaps left-over biscuits from the last recipe…)
• 120 ml milk
• 200 g granulated sugar
• 100 g unsalted butter
• 70 g unsweetened cocoa powder (50g for the mixture, 20g to roll the salami in)
• Icing sugar (to dust the roll in)
• 1 teaspoon rum aroma (this is optional)

To get things rolling (pun intended)…

• Break up your chosen biscuits. You can do this by hand or use a rolling pin to crush them underneath a tea-towel. You don’t want the pieces to be too small, or too large. This could be great for getting out all the stress… worked wonders for me! Make sure to put the biscuit pieces into a heat-proof glass bowl.
• Next, put the milk and sugar into a pan and put on the heat. Bring this to the boil, stirring from time to time. Only let the mixture boil for around 1 minute, you don’t want the sugar to burn! Take off the heat and add the butter and stir until it has completely melted.
• When it has cooled slightly, add in 50g of cocoa and the rum aroma. Stir until everything is mixed together and completely smooth.
• Pour the mixture over the broken biscuits in the glass bowl, mix until all of the biscuit pieces are coated with the cocoa mixture.
• Cut two large pieces of cling-film and lay as flat as possible on a cool surface. (I struggled a lot with the cling-film, it definitely stood up to its name… I nearly cried, my family nearly witnessed a grown woman struggling to hold down a piece of plastic and start crying… not a good time for me.)
• Separate the mixture into two even batches and put them on the two pieces of cling-film. Form a rough sausage with the mixture and start to tightly roll it in the cling-film to create a ‘salami’. Repeat with both batches of the mixture.
• Place the rolls in the fridge until they are nice and firm, perhaps for a couple of hours or overnight.
• Before serving, take the salami out of the cling-film and roll in the remainder of the unsweetened cocoa, then dust with icing sugar. You can then put them back in the fridge, or slice and serve straight away.

There you have it. Super easy, but great taste – what’s not to like? Instead of butter biscuits, you could use Wenzel’s Gingerbread biscuits to create your own version, without the rum aroma.

Get rolling!

Merry-almost-Christmas,

Wenzel’s xo