Chocolate Salami with Brandy

Chocolate mixture

1. It is all very simple, with no baking, using ready-made products you can buy in any store. First of all, you need natural dark chocolate with 60-70% cocoa. It’s important that it contains only natural cocoa butter, otherwise it will separate when melted. The cookies are sugar cookies, most often sold here as little squares, a familiar treat from childhood.

   

2. Set up a water bath. We take a large ceramic pot, fill it halfway with water and set a large heatproof glass bowl on it so that the water stays about 1 cm below the bottom of the bowl, which works great. Place on medium heat and bring the water to a gentle simmer.

3. Melt the chocolate and let it cool. When the bowl is hot, break the chocolate bars into it by hand and stir with a wooden spatula until melted. Make sure no water gets into the chocolate. Take the bowl off the heat and let the chocolate cool almost to room temperature, so that it stays soft but doesn’t run.

   

4. Cream the butter with the sugar and brandy. Meanwhile, with a mixer, beat the very soft butter with the sugar until creamy. Pour 2 tbsp of brandy, rum or an aromatic liqueur into the butter and sugar and mix thoroughly again. For a non-alcoholic version, use flavorings, or cherry or orange juice.

5. Combine the butter with the chocolate. Add the butter to the cooled chocolate and mix with a silicone or wooden spatula until smooth.

   

6. Add the cookies. The amount of cookies is up to you. We took half a pack (100 g) so that the chocolate salami would have large, fairly sparse specks, looking less like salami and more like bologna or Braunschweiger. You can crumble the cookies by hand or cut them into small cubes with a knife. Add the cookie pieces to the chocolate mixture and stir. If the chocolate mixture is a bit runny, add 1-2 tbsp of regular cocoa (7–14 g) powder. Besides the cookies, you can add chopped nuts to the filling: walnuts, hazelnuts or cashews.

   

Shaping the salami

1. Wrap the mixture in plastic. To shape the salami log, use a cut-open plastic bag, as chocolate doesn’t stick to it and comes off easily. With a spatula, spread the chocolate filling on the plastic in a log shape and dust the surface with cocoa powder. I once saw this dessert dusted with powdered sugar instead of cocoa, which looks very pretty. Then start wrapping it, forming an elongated “sausage”. It looks so much like the real thing, it’s amazing. Wrap it tightly so the surface is as smooth as possible, with no air bubbles.

   

2. Chill the salami. Put the roll in the refrigerator for half an hour to an hour so the mixture sets.

Serving

1. Decorate the salami. Basically, it’s already done. But for a nice visual effect, I suggest removing the plastic and wrapping the salami in crepe paper, the kind often used for gift wrapping. Tie the ends with twine, leaving little loops.

   

2. Slice and serve. It’s best to keep the dessert in the refrigerator, taking it out ahead of time before slicing so the mixture softens and doesn’t crumble. Chocolate salami goes wonderfully with morning coffee, and we really liked it.

   They say the dessert can usually be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week. In practice, it gets eaten much faster.