For the third week of BM #98, I will be showing you three easy to make chocolate candies. Candies is the theme of the week and they can be in any shape, and I chose to make them with chocolate. Who doesn’t love chocolate and candies. The market is flooded with so many variety of candies and it is a really tough job for kids to resist them. As parents, we can make them at home so that kids won’t indulge in store bought sugar and chemical loaded bars and candies. I usually use Morde – a chocolate compound in all my recipes, but recently I bought a bag of 50% Callebaut which would be good quality and taste wise. Chocolate compounds don’t need to be tempered and they are quite stable even at hotter climates, but good quality chocolate needs tempering otherwise they go soft at higher temperatures. Tempering is so new to me and I am still learning the basics. But I quite thoroughly enjoyed the tempering. There are so many methods bu which chocolate can be tempered, and I chose the easiest of all. Heat chocolate until it reaches 110°F, remove from heat and bring temperature to 80°F. At 80°F, the chocolate is tempered and can be used immediately in recipes. I will do a separate post once I learn it well.
Today’s recipe is for a simple peanut cluster. It has only two ingredients, chocolate and roasted peanuts. Usually nuts and chocolate go so well together and so I didn’t have any doubt on how this would taste. I have made White chocolate Corn Flake clusters previously and my daughter loved it so much. So I was very sure that she will like this too. This one uses dark chocolate, in this case I used the Callebaut. If tempered perfectly, these clusters must have a nice crunch and when bitten should break neatly without going soft. I refrigerated the clusters for setting and they set in 10 minutes. Once you have the nuts ready, the procedure takes very little time. And this is such a highly addictive snack without any added chemicals. You can use any roasted nuts in place of peanuts. As predicted my daughter loved these so much.
Ingredients:
Dark / Milk Chocolate – 1/2 cup
Roasted Peanuts – 1/2 cup
Procedure:
In a double boiler, melt chocolate. Use a thermometer and make sure that the temperature doesn’t go beyond 110°F.
Remove from the boiler, place the chocolate on an ice bath and keep on stirring until the temperature drops to 80°F.
Pour the chocolate immediately on the peanuts and mix it well.
Line a tray with parchment.
Take spoon full of the mixture and place on the paper.
Once the whole batch is done, refrigerate the tray for 10 minutes or until nicely set.
Remove from paper and store in airtight box in fridge.

Chocolate Peanut Clusters Recipe
Ingredients
- Dark / Milk Chocolate - 1/2 cup
- Roasted Peanuts - 1/2 cup
Instructions
- In a double boiler, melt chocolate.
- Use a thermometer and make sure that the temperature doesn't go beyond 110°F.
- Remove from the boiler, place the chocolate on an ice bath and keep on stirring until the temperature drops to 80°F.
- Pour the chocolate immediately on the peanuts and mix it well.
- Line a tray with parchment.
- Take spoon full of the mixture and place on the paper.
- Once the whole batch is done, refrigerate the tray for 10 minutes or until nicely set.
- Remove from paper and store in airtight box in fridge.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#98
Sending this entry to Valli’s Kid’s Delight event hosted by Rafeeda
Once you start eating chocolate like Callibaut, there will be no turning back. 🙂 Love those clusters, I guess I would munch on that whole bunch!
Delicious looking chocolate peanut clusters. Kids will love it.
Addition of peanuts make this a healthy treat too. A simple and nice way to use peanuts.
Chocolate peanut clusters look so irresistible and a healthy treat for kids. Once I made these with almonds. Lovely share.
These are addictive without any doubt. My kids would love to have these as a snack.
Tempering looks a bit difficult in the start, but once perfected you are a chocolate master. I had made loads of chocolates earlier and hence I know. This peanut chocolate clusters looks yum and I would love them with 70% dark chocolate :D. yum…OMG I am drooling.