Recipe by Jodie Smith

Mint Chocolate Christmas Slice

Name: Mint Chocolate Christmas Slice
Prep time: 20 min

Prep20 min

Jump to recipe

Shop the pantry

Danny's Snacking Chocolate Thins Mint 140gm

$5.95

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

Three layers, none of them baked. A chocolate oat biscuit base, a middle of mint chocolate thins laid flat and left whole, and a thin dark ganache poured over the top. Sixteen squares, twenty minutes of work, three hours in the fridge.

Ingredients

Makes 16 squares. Prep 20 minutes, no baking, plus 3 hours setting. We stock the biscuits, the thins and the chocolate almonds. The butter, the cream and the dark chocolate are yours.

The base
200g	Jen's Traditional Choc Oat Biscuits, about two thirds of the pack
60g	unsalted butter, melted
	a pinch of fine salt
The middle
1 pack (140g)	Danny's Snacking Chocolate Thins Mint
The top
150g	dark chocolate, around 50 per cent cocoa, chopped
60ml	thickened cream
30g	VPC Milk Chocolate Almonds, roughly chopped

Read the packs before you make this for an allergy. There is milk in every layer, soy in the thins, wheat and oats in the biscuit base, almonds on top, and the thins are labelled as possibly carrying traces of peanuts and tree nuts. The mint pieces are set with gelatine, so this is not one for a vegetarian table.

Three layers, and why the thins stay whole

The mint thins are exactly what the name says: shards of milk chocolate with mint pieces set into them, 140g to a pack, and the ingredient panel puts the mint at 35 per cent of it. Melt them and you get a smooth mint ganache and you have thrown away the only interesting texture in the bag. Laid flat over the base instead, they stay as a distinct sheet you can see in cross section, and they still snap when someone bites through the square.

The base needs less butter than the usual crushed biscuit slab, because Jen's choc oat biscuits are 23 per cent dark compound chocolate before you start. That coating melts as you crush and press, then sets hard again in the fridge and does half the binding for you. Sixty grams of butter to two hundred of biscuit is enough. Use what you would put in a plain digestive base and the slice sweats at room temperature.

Method

Line a 20cm square tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang on two sides.
Crush the choc oat biscuits to coarse crumbs, in a processor or in a bag with a rolling pin.
Stir the melted butter and the salt through the crumbs until they clump when pressed.
Press the crumbs into the tin in an even layer, compacting them with the base of a glass.
Chill the base for 15 minutes while you open the chocolate.
Lay the mint thins flat over the base in one overlapping layer, snapping pieces to fill the gaps.
Melt the dark chocolate and the cream together in a bowl set over barely simmering water.
Stir until smooth, then let the ganache stand for 5 minutes so it thickens slightly.
Pour it over the mint layer and spread it to the edges with a palette knife.
Scatter the chopped chocolate almonds over the top and press them lightly in.
Chill for at least 3 hours, until the surface is firm under a fingertip.
Lift the slab out by the paper and cut 16 squares with a hot dry knife, wiping between cuts.

Cutting it, keeping it, and December on a bench

The knife is the whole difference between sixteen squares and sixteen shards. Set chocolate is brittle and a cold blade pushes rather than cuts, so the top cracks away from the base. Stand a long knife in a jug of hot water, dry it completely, then cut in one press straight down instead of dragging. Wipe and reheat between every cut.

It keeps for a week in an airtight container in the fridge, layered with baking paper. Serve it cold and cut, not as a slab that sits out through the afternoon, because a 30 degree day undoes three hours of setting in about twenty minutes. If a piece comes back from the car with a chalky white bloom on it, why chocolate turns white in summer explains what that is and whether it matters.

For a different middle layer, Danny's Toffee Thins with Peanuts and Sea Salt bring salt and crunch instead of mint, and the milk chocolate version of the same thins is the softer, sweeter one of the pair. Both lay flat the same way and neither changes the timings. This is one of two set chocolate things worth having in the fridge in December: rose Turkish delight rocky road is the other, and it is deliberately rough where this one is neat. Make ahead Christmas food has the rest of the list.

Common questions

How long does a chocolate slice take to set?

Three hours in the fridge for this one, and there is no shortcut worth taking. The freezer sets the top faster but it also makes the ganache brittle and it can pull moisture onto the surface when the slice comes back out, which shows as dull streaks. If you are short of time, make the base and the mint layer the night before, then pour the ganache in the morning and you only need the three hours once.

Can you make this a week ahead?

You can make it a week ahead and keep it whole, uncut, in an airtight container in the fridge. Cut it on the day. Cut edges dry out and pick up fridge smells, and the biscuit base slowly softens where it is exposed. Whole and covered, day seven is almost as good as day one.

How do you cut set chocolate without shattering it?

Warm the knife and let the slab warm slightly too. Ten minutes out of the fridge takes the brittleness off without softening the base. Then use a hot, dry, thin bladed knife, press straight down rather than sawing, and clean the blade between cuts so you are not dragging set ganache through the next line. If the top still cracks, your ganache layer is thicker than it needs to be.

Danny's Snacking Chocolate Thins Mint is $5.95 for a 140g pack, which makes it an easy thing to add to a box you are already sending. The rest of the Danny's Snacking Chocolates range sits with our wider chocolate and snacking shelves, next to the festive entertaining essentials. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.