Mint Slice

Recently on Taste forums there has been a few "pimped" biscuits that would, I am sure, make Pimp That Snack proud. First up was a drool worthy wagon wheel, then came a chocolate royal to die for. Both of these were made by the lovely EmmCee over at The Claytons Blog. I had been considering trying the chocolate royal myself however I am not a huge fan of large quantities of marshmallow, it gets way too sweet for me way too quickly, so I scrubbed that idea and put my thinking cap on as to what I could "pimp" myself.

For a long time my favourite chocolate biscuit has been Arnott's Mint Slice. I love the dark chocolate biscuit base, the creamy minty filling and the dark chocolate coating. It seemed that it would be easy enough to recreate on a large scale. I just needed to find the right recipes to make it work.

Not that long ago Taste had added recipes that had been published in Vogue Entertaining + Travel to their enormous range of recipes. When they were first added I went through all of them saving ones to make. I recalled that one was a lovely chocolaty biscuit so I decided to try using it for the base of my giant mint slice. The Very Chocolate Biscuits recipe was just perfect. I was able to form large balls from the dough and pat them out on cookie trays for baking. It is a firm biscuit but with just the right amount of chewiness to it. I made half the recipe and got two 15 cm diameter biscuits plus 12 smaller ones. I made these last night and left them overnight so that they cooled completely.

I moved onto what I would use for the minty filling. It is more of an icing filling than a marshmallow. I remembered years ago making treats with my mother called peppermint creams. They were minty treats that were half dipped in chocolate. Since I hadn't made them since I was a child I wasn't sure how they were made. A search of Taste gave me a couple of recipes, both involving egg white and neither having the best ratings. So I cast my net further and turned to google. Which is where I found a recipe on the lovely blog, Fig Jam and Lime Cordial, that would be perfect. I made half a recipe of this and it was just the perfect amount for my two large biscuits.

I had purchased some food-grade mint oil for use in chocolate making and this was perfect for use in the filling instead of the essence. Arnott's say on their packaging that they use pure mint oil in their mint slice so it was only right that I used it in mine.

For the chocolate coating, I didn't have any dark couverture chocolate left but I doubt that I would have used it on this anyway. I like to keep it for special occasions and even though this is kind of special it really is just for me and a couple of other to share so I didn't bother. I was going to use Lindt 70% chocolate to coat it but when I was at the supermarket Whittaker's Chocolate was on special so I purchased a block of their Dark Ghana (72%) and their Bittersweet Dark (42%) and I melted about half of each block. I spooned it over them so that the top and sides were coated and then I put them in the fridge to set.

I let them set in the fridge for as long as I could bare it before testing them. It probably could have set a bit longer but I just wanted to try it. It was perfect, it tasted just like the real thing, if not better. I am thinking that with a couverture chocolate it would be divine. I think that I will make my own small mint slices at some stage.

I will admit the piece I ate was big and after all the testing and trying while making it and the "cleaning up" of the drips of melted chocolate I actually feel quite sick from eating too much sweet stuff, oh dear. I am sure I will feel better in the morning once all that sugar has been processed. :)