Salted Caramel Pecan Treasures
- At January 19, 2017
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Roxanne Writes On
- 2
Salted Caramel Pecan Treasures
Maddie Cash, the beloved heroine of my latest book, THE CHOCOLATE CURE, adores these delicious bite-sized treats. Each book in the Love at the Chocolate Shop series features a special treat, and as a gift to our readers, we’ve got recipe cards to go along with them! We give them away regularly on our Facebook page, so please visit us there.
In the meantime, here’s the recipe for Maddie’s irresistible treat. Enjoy!
Salted Caramel Pecan Treasures
You’ll need:
Mini-muffin tin plus 24 mini-muffin liners
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup caramels, unwrapped (approx. 45 caramels)
1.5 tablespoons evaporated milk (can substitute milk or heavy cream)
24 whole pecans
Coarse pink Himalayan salt
- Fill mini-muffin tins with mini-cupcake liners.
- Microwave chocolate chips, checking and stirring frequently, until smoothly melted
- Drop 1 tablespoon of melted chocolate into each cupcake liner, reserving ¼ of chocolate in bowl for later. Using pastry brush, paint the melted chocolate onto the bottom and about 2/3 up sides of liners.
- Place chocolate-lined mini-muffin tins in freezer.
- Microwave caramels and evaporated milk, checking and stirring frequently, until smoothly melted.
- Remove muffin tins from freezer. Place one whole pecan in bottom of each cup.
- Pour caramel into chocolate cups until about 2/3 full, covering pecans completely.
- Return tins to freezer for about 5 minutes.
- Use pastry brush to paint remaining melted chocolate onto chilled cups, completely covering the caramel. Sprinkle with pink Himalayan salt while chocolate is still warm.
- Return to freezer for about 30 minutes.
Enjoy!
One Fitness Tip, One Healthy Recipe
Today at Tote Bags ‘n Blogs, I’m sharing one fitness tip and one recipe. (Just in case, I’ll post it here too.) How great is that, being that it’s the first week in January and we’re all focused on starting the new year off right, and aren’t yet depressed because we ended up eating the last of the Christmas fudge instead of throwing it out, like we told ourselves we would?
Anyway, I’ve promised myself for the past several years that I’d get more exercise, particularly yoga, which you’d think would be easy, because I love yoga and there are so many ways it’s good for us. Unfortunately, going to yoga class involves leaving the house, a barrier many work-at-home-borderline-kleenex-box-slipper-recluses may recognize. Writing works the mind, but it’s trash on the body. Yoga keeps me limber enough to create worlds like my latest Sunset Bay Sanctuary series. 🙂
But recently I discovered a great way to bring the yoga class to me, via apps! Whoo-HOO! All you need is a quiet spot with a mat or carpet, and your favorite device. You get the soothing voice of an instructor, pictures of someone in the postures and voila, you just follow the instructions to bliss and great abs. Or so I tell myself.
Here are the three I’ve found:
Down Dog has options for your level of experience, the kind of music you want and the length of practice. I’ve done it several times already and really like it. I’m using the free version so far, but there’s also a monthly membership I might upgrade to, if I get bored.
I’ve also downloaded Yoga Studio. Billed as “The #1 yoga app for iPhone” this one has many more options, making it more customizable to your own needs. As it’s only $3.99, I downloaded it but haven’t tried it yet. Early days.
There’s also All-In Yoga. As I love to have options, I downloaded the free version of this one on my phone too, because, why not, it’s free. I haven’t played around with this yet, to say whether or not I like it.
So far, my “do more yoga this year” resolution is going great, thanks to these apps. (You’ll notice I kept my resolution fairly vague. It’s the key to success.)
As for the recipe, it’s called 5 Minute Magic Green Sauce and it comes from Lindsay of Pinch of Yum, to whom I’m eternally grateful. This stuff is amazing.
It’s basically a pistachio-avocado pesto. Lindsay says she could eat it every day for the rest of her life and I GET IT. It’s delicious! I’ve made two batches in less than a week. It’s fantastic in salads, or as a dip for crackers or vegetables, or straight from the spoon. I’m eating it on toast for breakfast, right now, in fact. Here’s the recipe:
5 MINUTE MAGIC GREEN SAUCE
INGREDIENTS:
1 avocado
1 cup packed parsley and cilantro leaves (combined)
1 jalapeno, ribs and seeds removed
2 cloves garlic
Juice of one lime (or two – get lots of limey goodness in there!)
½ cup water
½ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup shelled pistachios
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Pulse all ingredients – except pistachios – in a food processor until incorporated.
- Add pistachios and pulse until mostly smooth (depends on what consistency you want.)
- Serve as a dip, spread or sauce – or add additional water or oil to thin the sauce for use as a dressing or a
marinade.
Lindsay adds that you can sub walnuts or almonds for the pistachios and it’ll work, but she doesn’t think the taste is quite as good. I *LOVE* the pistachio version; those babies are expensive but worth it for this stuff. (I suspect pine nuts would also work but I have no data to back this up at the moment.)
I mixed this Magic Green Sauce with cooked farro, spinach and halved cherry tomatoes for a hearty and delicious salad. You could use quinoa or couscous, probably and it would be just as good.
I’m with Lindsay on this: it’s AWESOMELY YUMMY!
Anyone else have current favorite recipes or fitness tips to share? I’d love to hear from you!
Broth, Anyone? 99c Books, Anyone?
I love soup. It’s the best part of the autumn-winter stretch, when we’re often cold at the end of the day. I love to make a big pot of vegetable-hearty soup on Monday and usually the leftovers stretch for lunches and on-the-run meals until at least Wednesday. Add some bread and cheese to mix it up a bit and we’re good.
(Also allows us to eat pizza and cheezies on the weekend without feeling completely dietarily irresponsible.)
Boxed broth makes it a lot easier to cook soup quickly. But this article reminded me that I used to love making my own broth. Maybe it’s time to start again!
Why New Yorkers will be sipping bone broth (in coffee cups) this winter | Well+Good.
There are two characters in my Three River Ranch series of books that love to cook for, fuss over, and generally take care of those around them. Their names are Bliss and Blythe, twin sisters of “mature” years and this kind of meal is just their thing. FYI, all books in the Three River Ranch (4 Book Series), including the Christmas novella Saving the Sheriff, are on sale for 99c from November 2-6.