Homemade Caramel Praline

First, prepare the two fillings. For the salted caramel, follow our recipe for Karamell Beurre Salé. You only need about 150 g, so half the recipe is enough. We always make the whole recipe anyway, so there is always caramel in the fridge.

You can also prepare the caramel a few days in advance. On the day you make the pralines, simply fill about 150 g into a small piping bag and let it stand at room temperature while you make the shells.

Put 340 g Milk chocolate into a glass bowl and warm it in the microwave for 1 minute at 600 watts. Stir with a dough scraper and return it to the microwave for another 1 minute at 600 watts. The chocolate now begins to melt: keep stirring for about one minute so the heat distributes well.

Place the bowl in the microwave one last time for 20 to 30 seconds at 600 watts. The chocolate is now completely melted. Set it aside.

Pour 150 g double cream into a pan with 2 tsp Cocoa nibs and bring everything to the boil. Cocoa nibs are small pieces of the roasted cocoa bean. They give the ganache a crunchy texture and an intense cocoa aroma.

Pour about a third of the hot cream into the melted chocolate and stir everything together. Then add another small portion of cream and stir with a whisk. Finally, pour in the remaining cream with the Cocoa nibs and stir everything once more.

This creates an emulsion: the ganache becomes glossy and gets a perfect texture. If you add all the cream at once, the ganache can clump or separate and turn grainy.

Stir the ganache smooth and let it cool to 35 to 40 °C at room temperature. Check the temperature with a Thermometer.

Finally, add 20 g butter to the ganache and whisk it in vigorously. If you like, you can blend the ganache with a hand blender to perfect the emulsion. In our case it was already perfectly smooth.

Fill the ganache into a piping bag and leave it at room temperature while you prepare the chocolate shells.

Clean the Praline mold made of Polycarbonate with a dry piece of cotton wool, not with water! This removes the last small dirt particles and limescale marks, which would otherwise end up as spots on your chocolate.

If you melt chocolate without keeping to specific temperatures, it develops white spots and won't release from the mould. So follow the temperature guidelines precisely, and it will shine beautifully and slide out of the mould with ease.

There are several methods, for example using a marble slab. We make it easier: melt the chocolate in the microwave at 600 watts to 45 °C, add one third of the amount as unmelted chocolate and let it cool to about 31 °C. For 375 g of melted chocolate, that means 125 g unmelted.

Be sure to use good couverture and not supermarket chocolate bars. We like working with Callebaut, Valrhona and Carma. The drops contain more cocoa butter and melt much faster.

Put 375 g of dark chocolate in a glass bowl, as glass distributes the heat nicely and evenly. Heat it for 1 minute at 600 watts, never higher, otherwise the chocolate will scorch and turn hard. Stir gently with a dough scraper and put it back in for another 1 minute at 600 watts.

Then keep stirring calmly until the chocolate has fully melted, and take your time. If you are unsure, measure the temperature: it should be 45 °C. If it is still too cold, heat it again for 10 to 20 seconds. But make sure it does not rise above 48 °C. At 50 °C it burns, and then it cannot be saved.

Once the chocolate has completely melted and reached 45 °C, add the 125 g of unmelted dark chocolate. Now be patient: stir calmly and let it melt slowly. It is normal for not everything to melt at once. Under no circumstances reheat the chocolate at this stage.

The unmelted chocolate brings stable cocoa butter crystals, which provide the shine. The chocolate cools to 31 to 32 °C in the process: the perfect working temperature for dark chocolate. If it is warmer, the shells become too thin; below 29 °C they become too thick.

Get everything ready: the moulds cleaned with cotton wool, the cake rack with the container underneath for the excess chocolate, the chocolate scraper and plenty of baking paper to protect your work surface. Chocolate leaves stains!

The quantity is enough for three moulds, but always work with one mould at a time. Fill the chocolate into a large piping bag.

Fill the cavities of the mould with chocolate, then tap the mould on the table so the air bubbles rise. This is very important: without tapping, you will see the bubbles later on the surface of the pralines.

Pour the excess chocolate back into the bowl. Tilt the mould as you do so and help with the scraper so the chocolate can run off well.

Run the scraper over the mould so it becomes as clean as possible. Then place it upside down on the cake rack and let it drip for at least 5 minutes.

Afterwards, scrape over the mould once more with the scraper so it is completely clean, and place it in the freezer for 5 minutes.

Take the Cocoa nibs ganache and the salted caramel. Start with the caramel and fill each shell with about 2 g of caramel.

Pipe the ganache over the caramel. Do not fill the shells completely: leave 2 to 3 mm free at the top so you can seal them with chocolate afterwards. Put the mould in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Now comes the final step! Pipe pure chocolate, meaning no ganache, over all the cavities. If your chocolate has become too firm in the meantime, warm it in the microwave at 600 watts for 10 seconds.

Scrape the mould clean once more and put it in the freezer for a final 10 minutes.

Now it is time to take the pralines out of the mould! If you have tempered the chocolate correctly, they will release on their own: simply turn the mould over and the pralines will fall out.

If they do not fall out by themselves, tap the mould briefly on the table. Don't worry, the polycarbonate mould is very sturdy and will not break. Tadaa! Beautiful, glossy pralines.