Salted Cramel Chocolate Torte

Last week on the blog the first recipe post went up, an easy and quick risotto style dish using Orzo. This week I promised you a super sweet treat. A salted caramel and chocolate torte that is so decadent it should be illegal. Here is the recipe.

You will need:
175g Digestive Biscuits
85g Butter (melted)
397g Caramel (a whole tin of Carnation Caramel)
1Tsp Coarse Sea Salt
300g Plain Chocolate (70%)
600ml Double Cream
25g Icing Sugar
2Tsp Vanilla Extract

Directions:
note: It's advised to use a loose-bottomed cake tin for easy removal of the torte later. The original recipe also includes lining the tin with baking parchment. I didn't line my tin or grease it, I used a non stick quiche tin instead of a rounded tin as I thought the fluted edge would look prettier. My tin is around 25cm whereas the recipe calls for a 20cm tin. I added four more biscuits and a little extra butter so that the mixture would fit my tin.

Starting with the base, crush the biscuits up in a bowl. You can do this by bashing them with the end of a rolling pin first or using a food processor like I did.
Once the biscuits are all crushed up, add the melted butter and stir until you get the consistency of wet sand. Firmly press the biscuit mixture into the bottom of your cake/quiche tin and chill for 10 minutes.

Whilst the base is chilling, begin the salted caramel filling. Take two tablespoons of the caramel and place in a separate bowl for later. Stir the sea salt into the remainder of the caramel. Once the base has chilled spoon the salted caramel mixture onto the centre of the base, leaving a 1-2cm border. Chill this for 20 minutes. ( I chilled mine for a few hours as I had a few errands to run. With something like this I'd assume the longer you can chill it the better)

Take one tablespoon of the double cream and add to the two tablespoons of caramel you put aside earlier.
At this point you need to make a ganache to cover the torte. There are two ways you can do this the first is by melting the chocolate in a double boiler and then adding the cream as per the original recipe. I tried this first but the mixture curdled. I'm not sure how or why it went wrong, it just did and it was annoying.
The second time round I heated the double cream until it was just about boiling. I then poured it onto the broken up pieces of chocolate and stirred until I had a smooth creamy mixture. Much easier!
Sift in the Icing sugar and stir in the vanilla extract. Leave the mixture to cool for 10 minutes.

Once the chocolate has cooled down ladle or pour onto the biscuit base. Firstly around the biscuit border so that it seals in the salted caramel centre. Then fill the entire tin, give it a gentle shake to smooth out the surface and leave for at least 5 hours or up to 24 hours until firm.

Remove the torte from the tin carefully. Using a loose bottomed tin will make this easier, I didn't line my tin but used a non stick tin and my torte cane out with little effort.
Using the caramel and double cream mixture you set aside earlier place into a piping bag or small food bag and snip off the end. You can use this mixture to decorate your torte however you want. Serve with single cream and enjoy.

The Verdict:
This was a completely new recipe for me and although I had a little setback with the chocolate, overall it went really well. I know I described this recipe as decadent and it truly is. R and I shared one slice and even that felt too much.
I love the finish and look of this torte, taste wise it really wasn't for me. It kills me to say that because it looks so delicious but I just didn't like it. I think if you are a lover of plain/dark chocolate this will be fine but I hate dark chocolate so that's probably why I didn't like it.
When I first read the recipe I thought of substituting the dark chocolate with milk or white then thought it may alter the recipe too much and not taste the way it was intended so decided not too. I

n hindsight I don't think using a different type of chocolate would make it any different, just more enjoyable for my taste-buds. R who also is not a fan of dark chocolate really didn't like it. We embarrassingly enough scraped the chocolate off and enjoyed the biscuit and salted caramel base by itself.
I'll definitely be trying this again, probably in smaller individual tins and with milk chocolate instead of plain. Keep a look out on our Instagram for those at a later date.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe and please let us know if you decide to try it in the future
Recipe adapted from Good Food
S.x