Recipe by Jodie Smith

Dubai Style Pistachio Chocolate Slice

Name: Dubai Style Pistachio Chocolate Slice
Prep time: 20 min

Prep20 min

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Jen's Limited Edition Dubai Style Choc Coated Pistachio Melting Moments (320g)

$14.95

Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.

Pistachio and chocolate, set in a tin and cut into squares rather than rolled into a log or moulded into a bar. A packet of pistachio melting moments is crushed and stirred through dark chocolate, pressed flat and left in the fridge for two hours. Twenty minutes of work. Makes 16 pieces.

Ingredients

Makes 16 pieces. Prep 20 minutes, then 2 hours in the fridge, and no oven at any point. The biscuits and the chocolate almonds come from us. The dark chocolate, butter, golden syrup and loose pistachios are a supermarket buy.

For the slice
320g	Jen's Dubai Style Choc Coated Pistachio Melting Moments, one packet
200g	dark chocolate, 45 to 55 per cent, chopped
60g	unsalted butter
2 tbsp	golden syrup
70g	shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
	a good pinch of flaked sea salt
For the top
100g	milk or dark chocolate, melted
2 tbsp	pistachios, chopped fine
Instead of the pistachio biscuit, if it has sold out
300g	Jen's Macadamia and White Chocolate Biscuits, or Jen's Choc Viennese Whirls, or Jen's Traditional Choc Oat Biscuits
To serve
	VPC Milk Chocolate Almonds in a bowl beside it

What Dubai style means, and what is doing the crunch here

The idea that started all of this is a thick chocolate bar filled with pistachio cream and crisp shredded pastry, the wispy stuff called kataifi. The pastry is what gives the original its rustle. We do not range kataifi, so rather than send you hunting for it, this recipe takes the flavour idea and lets the biscuit do the crunching instead. Jen's Dubai Style Choc Coated Pistachio Melting Moments are two shortbread style biscuits with a pistachio cream between them, coated in chocolate and dusted with crushed pistachio, so the pistachio cream, the chocolate and the crisp bite are all already in the packet. Crushing them and setting them in more chocolate concentrates the lot. They are a limited edition, which is the honest reason to make this now rather than in March.

A slice, not a log

Crushed biscuit and melted chocolate can go two ways, and they are not interchangeable. Rolled in baking paper it becomes a log you slice into coins, which is what our chocolate salami with shortbread and macadamias is, and it wants coarse chunks so the cut face looks marbled. Pressed into a lined tin it becomes a slab you cut into squares, which is this, and it wants the biscuit crushed finer so the pieces hold together at the edge instead of crumbling when the knife goes through. Make the log for a board and the slice for a tin you are handing over. More on which Jen's biscuit is which is in our piece on Jen's Biscuits.

Method

Line a 20cm square tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang on two sides so you can lift the slab out later.
Put the biscuits in a sealed bag and crush them with a rolling pin to a mix of coarse crumbs and pieces about the size of a five cent coin. Stop before it turns to dust.
Melt the 200g of dark chocolate, the butter and the golden syrup together in a bowl over barely simmering water, stirring until it is smooth and glossy.
Take the bowl off the heat and let it cool for 5 minutes. Hot chocolate poured straight onto biscuit softens it.
Stir the crushed biscuit, the chopped pistachios and the salt through the chocolate until every piece is coated.
Tip it into the tin and press it down hard with the back of a spoon, working from the middle out to the corners. The pressing is what stops it crumbling when you cut it.
Refrigerate for 1 hour, until firm to the touch.
Pour the melted 100g of chocolate over the top and tilt the tin until it runs to the edges, then scatter the finely chopped pistachios over while it is still wet.
Refrigerate for another hour, until the top layer has set with no shine of liquid left on it.
Lift the slab out by the paper, sit it on a board and cut 16 squares with a large knife warmed under hot water and wiped dry between cuts.

Keeping it, and giving it away

Cut squares keep five days in an airtight container in the fridge and are better eaten at room temperature, so take out what you want 20 minutes before. In a warm Australian December the fridge is the only sensible place for it. If you are giving it, cut the squares, sit them in paper cases and pack them in a tin, because they travel best in a single layer. A bowl of VPC Milk Chocolate Almonds next to a plate of these covers the after dinner tier of a festive entertaining table without anyone turning the oven on.

Common questions

How long does the slice keep?

Five days in an airtight container in the fridge. It is a set slice rather than a fresh one, so it holds well, and warmth is the enemy rather than time. Keep the container away from anything strongly flavoured, since chocolate takes on smells from whatever is sitting beside it. Bring the squares to room temperature before serving or the texture reads as hard rather than short.

Can I freeze it?

Yes, and it freezes better than most set slices. Cut it into squares first, layer them between sheets of baking paper in an airtight container and freeze for up to two months. Thaw them in the fridge overnight rather than on the bench, because condensation on cold chocolate leaves the top streaked and dull. The chocolate topping can bloom slightly after freezing, which is cosmetic and changes nothing about how it tastes.

What makes a Dubai style chocolate different?

Two things, and neither is the chocolate itself. The filling is a pistachio cream rather than a praline or a caramel, which gives it that green, faintly savoury sweetness. And there is a crisp element through the filling, traditionally shredded kataifi pastry toasted in butter, so the bite crunches instead of yielding. That texture contrast is the whole trick. This recipe gets to the same place through the biscuit, which brings both the pistachio cream and the crunch already assembled.

Allergens

Read the packet before you serve this to anyone with an allergy. Our listing for Jen's Dubai Style Choc Coated Pistachio Melting Moments declares wheat, gluten, milk, soy and pistachio, and states that the biscuits may also contain almond, brazil nut, cashew, hazelnut, macadamia, pecan, pine nut, walnut, egg, lupin, peanut, sesame and sulphites. They are made in Australia from local and imported ingredients. The dark chocolate and pistachios you add carry their own labelling.

The biscuits sit with the rest of our biscuits, the almonds with chocolate and snacking, and the whole range is on the Jen's Biscuits brand page. If you are choosing a tin for someone else, Australian biscuits and biscuit tins is the guide to read next. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.