Salame Dolce (Chocolate Salami)
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Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 140 g raisins
  • 1/3 cup Marsala or rum
  • 155 g butter
  • 100 g sugar
  • 250 g plain butter biscuits, crumbed
  • 4 tbsp cocoa
  • 2 tbsp pine nuts
  • 2 tsp apricot jam

Ingredients

  • 1 cup raisins
  • 1/3 cup Marsala or rum
  • 5½ oz butter
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 2½ cups plain butter biscuits, crumbed
  • 4 tbsp cocoa
  • 2 tbsp pine nuts
  • 2 tsp apricot jam

Salame Dolce (Chocolate Salami)

Carol Field's inspired research into traditional and modern Italian cooking has made many hundreds of recipes available to English-speaking cooks. I found this simple recipe in her 1993 book 'Italy in Small Bites' - a compendium of mostly savoury, bread-based snacks for eating between meals or in the niddle of a day's work. I don't think Salame Dolce would keep hungry farm workers going for long but it would probably raise a smile, since although it is a chocolate sweetmeat, it does look a lot like salami. A memorable combination of nuts, biscuit crumbs, cocoa, butter, sugar and alcochol-soaked raisins, bound with butter and apricot jam, this Salame Dolce will keep for a week in the fridge and a few slices can be cut any time you need a between-meal pick-me-up. Great for a holiday weekend.

Getting ready

  1. Soak the raisins in the rum or Marsala for half an hour, then drain and squeeze out well. Reserve the rum. Have the butter nicely softened and make sure the biscuits are in fine crumbs.

Mixing and shaping

  1. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy - this will take about 5 minutes in a food mixer.
  2. Add all the other ingredients and mix everything together to form a firm dough. Use a spoonful of the liquid from the raisins if you need to.
  3. Shape the mixture into a cylinder and wrap in waxed paper or aluminium foil. Chill for 2-3 hours before slicing, and always store in the fridge. Once the 'salame' is cold and set you can rub a little icing sugar into the outside of the roll to simulate the white bloom found on the skin of good quality, aged salami. This recipe makes a lot - at least 60 slices.