Makes roughly: 20 clustersPreparation time: 15 minutesCooking time: 10 minutesCooling time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

250g shelled walnuts in halves

150g sugar100ml double cream40g golden syrup or

molasses40g butter½ tsp salt100g dark chocolate,

broken into small bits (optional)

20 or so fairy cake paper cases and a sugar thermometer

I love the scene with all the squirrels beavering away in Willy Wonka’s nut workshop, sorting out the bad walnuts from the good ones. As a kid I often had to help shell walnuts from my Great Aunt’s walnut tree and I often wished I had a gang of squirrels helping me out.

Luckily you don’t need Willy Wonka’s squirrels to crack open walnuts for this recipe (although it would be cool to have one anyway!). You can easily find them already shelled at the shop.

Method

To make the caramel, put half the sugar in a pot with 2 tablespoons of water. Place over a high heat and leave to melt. Do not stir, but swirl the pot around if needed. Once the caramel becomes a dark reddish brown colour, remove it from the heat and add the rest of the filling ingre-dients. Be careful not to stand over the pan, as the caramel will steam and bubble. Swirl the pan around before returning to a medium heat. Cook for 4-5 minutes or until it reaches 126°C.

Stir in the walnuts until they are thoroughly coated with the caramel. Leave to cool for 5 minutes before spooning small heaps into the fairy cake paper cases.

Leave the clusters to set at room temperature (or to speed up the process, stick them in the fridge) before eating.

Optional chocolate topping: Melt the chocolate in a bain marie (bowl over simmering water). Drizzle some of the melted chocolate back over the clusters. sure they are completely flat. Freeze for 3 hours minimum.

tomake

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Rachel KhooAfter graduating from Central Saint Martin’s College with a degree in Art and Design, British food writer Rachel Khoo was lured to Paris to study pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu. Rachel shot to fame when her TV series, The Little Paris Kitchen, was broadcast by BBC. Her beautiful tie-in cookbook and the follow up, My Little French Kitchen, have been published around the globe. Rachel now travels the world working on a variety of projects, including a weekly recipe column for the Evening Standard.

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