Chocolate Salami with Condensed Milk, Cookies, and Nuts

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   How do you make chocolate salami with condensed milk, cookies, and nuts? Gather the ingredients. Use plain shortbread cookies, the basic kind. Choose the highest-quality, natural butter, with no added vegetable fats. Be sure to take it out of the fridge ahead of time - the butter needs to soften.

2. Step 2:

   

   Crush the cookies any way you can - in a blender, a food chopper, through a meat grinder, or with a plain rolling pin, like I did. Put the cookies in a sturdy plastic bag and give it a good pounding with the rolling pin. Some of the cookies will crumble to fine crumbs, while some will stay in chunks. Stop at this point - the chunks will mimic the look of fat in the salami's cross-section. If the crumb is too uniform, you won't get that effect.

3. Step 3:

   

   Take a large bowl and pour the crushed cookies into it.

4. Step 4:

   

   Add the softened butter and mix. You won't get it fully uniform at this stage, but that's not necessary.

5. Step 5:

   

   Sift the cocoa powder into the cookies. Use natural cocoa; a drink mix like Nesquik won't work. Sifting makes the cocoa more even and breaks up any lumps.

6. Step 6:

   

   Take the nuts and chop them into small pieces. You can toast the nuts first in a dry skillet - they'll get crunchier and more fragrant. Walnuts work best in this salami, since they're the softest. But you can use any nuts you like or have on hand, or skip them entirely. Sometimes I add shelled sunflower seeds to this salami.

7. Step 7:

   

   Add the nuts to the cookie mixture. Pour in the condensed milk.

8. Step 8:

   

   Mix the mixture well. It won't be easy with a spoon because of the large cookie pieces, so I mixed it all with my hands.

9. Step 9:

   

   Take pieces of plastic wrap and shape the chocolate mixture into logs on them. Twist the wrap to form tight, even logs. Put them in the fridge. After an hour, take them out and roll the logs on the counter a bit so they become round. The butter will have firmed up a little by then, making this easy. Put the logs back in the fridge until fully set. I left mine overnight.

10. Step 10:

    

    Unwrap the finished salami and roll it in cocoa powder or powdered sugar. Cut it into slices and serve. Enjoy!