Chocolate mendiants

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 20 pieces, you will need:

• 1 30 g Candied grapefruit peel
• 2 20 raisins
• 3 20 whole almonds
• 4 10 walnut kernels
• 5 20 hazelnuts
• 6 20 pistachios
• 7 20 pine nuts
• 8 100 g dark chocolate
• Total weight: 220 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
30 min.	35 min.	1 hour 2 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Chop 30 g Candied grapefruit peel into small dice. Separate 20 raisins (they often come stuck together).
2	Lay a sheet of cooking parchment on a baking sheet and spread out 20 whole almonds, 10 walnut kernels, and 20 hazelnuts. Toast the nuts in the oven for 15 minutes.
3	After this time, take the nuts out of the oven. Tip the almonds and walnuts off the baking sheet and (if necessary) rub the hazelnuts in tea towel to remove the skins. Leave to cool.
4	Reuse the same paper and baking sheet to toast 20 pistachios and 20 pine nuts in the oven for 10 minutes. Being smaller, they will not take as long. Leave to cool.
5	Melt 100 g dark chocolate over a bain-marie. The usual method is to put the chocolate in a bowl, but if you use a small bottle instead, this makes the next stage easier.
6	Check that the chocolate is fully melted.
7	For this recipe, I used a silicon mould with rectangular compartments, but you can use whatever you have to hand - the shape doesn't matter.
8	Pour a thin layer of chocolate into the moulds (now the bottle comes into its own).
9	Then arrange the fruit and nuts on top. When everything is on, press down into the chocolate with your fingers.
10	My tip: work like a production line. Pour all the chocolate first, then add the all almonds, next the raisins, etc. This way, all your mediants will look the same.
11	Refrigerate for 2 hours to set the chocolate and make sure the fruit and nuts are stuck.
12	Take your mendiants out of their moulds gently, and leave to come back to room temperature before handing round or tucking in yourself.

Remarks

The French name means "mendicants", after the 4 types of fruit and nuts traditionally used in the Provençal thirteen Christmas desserts to represent the 4 mendicant religious orders: raisins for the Augustines, hazelnuts for the Carmelites, figs for the Franciscans and almonds for the Dominicans.
You can vary the topping depending on the fruit and nuts you have to hand, but do try to keep a mix of toasted nuts + dried fruit + candied fruit.

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