Chocolate Salami With Shortbread and Macadamias

Method

1. Break the shortbread into pieces with your hands, aiming for shards around 1cm and the dust that comes with them. A knife gives you neat cubes, and neat cubes look manufactured on the cut face.
2. Chop the macadamias into halves and quarters and set them aside with the biscuit.
3. Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup together in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. In the microwave, use 20 second bursts and stir between each one.
4. Take the bowl off the heat and stir in the cocoa powder, and the brandy if you are using it.
5. Let the mixture sit for 10 minutes, until it thickens to soft ganache. Fold biscuit into hot chocolate and it sinks, leaving a bare top and everything crowded at the bottom.
6. Fold in the shortbread and macadamias until every piece is coated, and stop as soon as it is even so the shards stay whole.
7. Tip half the mixture onto a sheet of baking paper and shape it roughly into a log about 5cm across.
8. Lift the near edge of the paper over the log and roll it away from you, using the paper to compress the log rather than your hands.
9. Twist both ends of the paper closed like a bon bon, then repeat with the second half of the mixture.
10. Roll each wrapped log gently on the bench to round it off, then chill for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
11. Unwrap a log, scatter the icing sugar over it and roll it in your palms until the surface goes pale and mottled, the way a cured salami looks under its skin. Dust with the cocoa powder for shadow.
12. Slice cold, 1cm thick, with a large knife warmed under the hot tap and wiped dry between cuts. Cold log and warm blade is the whole trick.
13. Overlap the rounds on a board and return anything you are not serving to the fridge.

Questions we get asked

What is chocolate salami?

A no-bake sweet from Italy and Portugal, salame di cioccolato, made by setting crushed biscuit and nuts in melted chocolate, rolling it into a log and chilling it. The name is about the look. Sliced, the pale biscuit and nut pieces against dark chocolate read as fat through cured meat, and the icing sugar rolled over the outside stands in for the bloom on the skin.

How long does chocolate salami keep?

Two weeks in the fridge, wrapped in baking paper inside an airtight container, and three months in the freezer. Slice it cold, or from about 15 minutes out of the freezer. It softens quickly in a warm room, so bring out what you are serving and leave the rest cold.

Can you make chocolate salami gluten free?

Yes, and this one converts more easily than most, because the biscuit swaps pack for pack. Use the 175g gluten free pure butter shortbread in place of the standard 175g pack and change nothing else. Check the labels on the shortbread, the chocolate and the golden syrup, since the biscuit is only one of three places gluten turns up.

The biscuit half of this list keeps in the cupboard, so it is worth ordering early and deciding later. The shortbread and the rest of that shelf are in biscuits, and a log wrapped in paper and string is one of the better entries in home-made Christmas food gifts. If it has to travel further than your own car, our Christmas hampers do that job instead. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.