This is an absolutely knock out edible chocolate gift. I’ve given a few away already this Christmas and everyone says it’s delicious. The recipe came from Olive Magazine; it looks and tastes impressive but it’s a doddle to make and the recipe is very flexible  – you can adapt it to suit any tastes or dietary requirements (I include a non nut version below for allergy sufferers..). Utterly yum!

Ingredients:

• 100g unsalted cashew nuts
• 25g unsalted butter
• a generous pinch of ground allspice
• a large pinch of sea salt flakes (actually you’ll need a few large pinches as you go along)
• 1 tablespoon of maple syrup
• 200g milk chocolate (I use Green and Blacks; don’t use Cadburys it doesn’t work in baking)
• 200g dark chocolate (with high cocoa content; again I use G+B
• 30g white chocolate (I use G+B again but any good supermarket cooking brand will do, just don’t use Nestle)

Method:

1. Put the cashews and unsalted butter along with the allspice, salt and maple syrup into a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat.
2. Cook until all the cashews are golden then tip out onto baking parchment, scatter over some more sea salt flakes and cool. (You’ll need to stir them from time to time, or do that cheffy pan flip thing to move them about. I like the pan flip thing).
3. Melt the milk and dark chocolate separately in bain maries (ie glass bowls over pans of barely simmering water).
4. Let the chocolates cool a little. Pour them out separately but making one large rectangle altogether, into a small baking tray lined with parchment.
5. Mix them together carefully with a fork to make a nice swirly pattern. Leave to cool for a bit.
6. Roughly chop the hardened cashews and scatter over the chocolate. Add some more salt (this may seem like a lot but you need to be able to taste it and it’s not too much of a sodium overload if you use sea salt flakes). Chill until set.
7. Melt the white chocolate (in a bain marie) and drizzle over the top in very thin squiggly lines using a metal spoon. (Be careful with white chocolate; it has such a low/non existent cocoa content that if you let it get too hot it seizes really easily; keep it cool and keep an eye on it).
8. Chill again until set then cut into shards. I put it into clear cellophane bags, tie with ribbon and label with a luggage tag to make it look fancy. [Store in the fridge as it softens very quickly].
9. To make this suitable for nut allergy sufferers: substitute chopped up Crunchie bar or Green and Blacks butterscotch flavour chocolate for the cashews (I made some like this and used a combination of both, which was delicious).