The Misadventurous Maker: Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate & Other Homemade Christmas Gifts

Hello!

You may have noticed if you follow along on Instagram or if you've seen this post, that I do so LOVE making edible homemade gifts. I always enjoy baking gifts for family, friends and my kids amazing teachers.

This was a gift for my son's incredible prep teacher:

This year the gorgeous and lovely Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim paid me the highest compliment. She asked me to bake gifts for her favourite people for Christmas. To have her like what I make (she's had a few taste tests over the years!) was a thrill! Chantelle sprinkles happiness and loveliness with the things she does online. The photo a day phenomenon has spread all over the world and is such a lovely way of looking for the good, beauty and creativity in your day. I just adore Chantelle and appreciate what she shares of herself. I was extremely chuffed to help her share some loveliness with her friends and family and contacts. All of the items I made needed to be able to be posted to various parts of Australia so nothing perishable or totally crushable was my main aim!

What I put in the boxes of yummo:

- Dulce de Leche Shortbread Sandwiches - recipe can be found here. These are always a favourite and are super easy to make!

- The fabulous Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella's Snickers Rocky Road - recipe can be found here.

- My trusty awesome White Chocolate, Toasted Macadamia, Toasted Coconut & Cranberry Rocky Road. I shall endeavour to post the recipe for this too, but you could easily wing it if you wanted to give it a go!

- My staple Maple Muesli. You can find a version of the recipe here, but these days I use coconut oil and skip the golden syrup just using maple syrup and almond is my fave variety at the moment. It's a ridiculously versatile recipe that I switch around depending on the seeds and nuts on hand.

- Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate Mix. I know it's summer in Australia but a few years ago when Jamie Oliver made this recipe, I had to try it! My version had to be salted caramel because I am OBSESSED with salted caramel!

My recipe is below, but in the meantime, here are some cute photos of the packages I made for Chantelle's peeps and some that I made for my kids teachers for end of year gifts.

Kinder & school teacher gifts:

Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate Mix

Ingredients:
Caramel:
- 2.5 cups of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract
- 1 teaspoon of sea salt flakes

Chocolate Mix:
- 1.5 cups of cocoa (I used 1 cup of dutch process cocoa powder and 1/2 cup of raw cacao)
- 3/4 cup of brown sugar
- 1/2 cup of malted milk powder
- 1/2 cup of powered milk
- 250 grams of best quality chocolate finely grated. I used a combination of dark and milk and used Lindt and Green and Blacks organic chocolate
- 1-2 tablespoons of sea salt flakes depending on your salt/sweet preferences.

Method:
Caramel:
- cook the sugar in a pan swirling the pan but not stirring until a dark caramel forms

- at the last minute, stir through the vanilla. Have a lined baking tray ready to go because although the caramel takes awhile, at the end it's very quick from going to a lovely deep caramel to burnt so as soon as you've got it to the desired level, pour straight away on to the lined tray. Sprinkle with sea salt.

- allow to cool completely
- shatter the caramel up - best method is putting it inside a big zip lock bag and then putting the bag inside a tea towel and then bash it with a rolling pin. You can then blitz it in a food processor until it becomes a gorgeous fine praline.

Chocolate Mix:
- keep the grated chocolate aside
- add all of the other ingredients to the caramel praline and blitz until a gorgeous chocolatey power occurs. Don't blitz for too long as you want to keep a few teeny tiny bits of caramel - these taste incredible in the hot chocolate at the end!
- fold through the grated chocolate and you're done!