Colossal Caramel XMas Log
Two young professionals (!) decide to treat their hard working office to a Christmas log they’ll never forget. Secretly they harbour desires to pimp the most amazing snack known to mankind – a Tunnock’s Caramel Log.
The hardest part was procuring a teeny weenie original to copy – do these things sell below the border? Many minions were dispatched to the land of porridge and The Proclaimers – and lo – a triumphant minion returned bearing the bounty we desired. The pimping was ON!
The ingredients:
3 cans evaporated (NOT the same as condensed Becky!) milk= £1
6oz stork
6oz sugar (plus some extra to thicken the pesky caramel)
4 packs wafers £1.40
800g of chocolate = £1.84
A bag of desiccated coconut 75p
Some Tunnock’s Caramel Logs
Gold paper 75p
We estimate the total cost to be somewhere in the region of £7ish, precision in the kitchen is not a strongpoint of ours.
Firstly – caramel – following a time honoured traditional Scottish recipe – ta Bec’s mum, we made a whole saucepan of caramel. We had a slight issue – the wrong kind of milk had been purchased, curse Becky and her short term memory. Onwards we soldiered over a hot cauldron thickening the cursed runny evaporated milk. We stirred for ages looking like the Witches from that Scottish play (minus one) and eventually our hocus-pocus was rewarded. The caramel was ready.
We let the caramel cool slightly whilst we set about creating the wafer centre – a simple wafer caramel sandwich. We decided to use an overlaying technique to provide structural integrity. Much gluing later our tempting wafer centre was complete. We gave the whole creation a few minutes to cool down and stick together as we were worried it may fall apart as we turned it. A fear that turned out to be well founded – nothing that some more caramel couldn’t overcome, mind. Frankenstein’s Tunnock’s inspired monster lived.
Whilst the beast was chilling, the desiccated coconut was toasted in a frying pan and left to cool.
After melting enough milk chocolate to fill Loch Ness we got to sloshing it over the wafer. Once it was evenly-ish covered we liberally sprinkled with coconut; once all sides were finished, we stood back and admired the fruit of our labour. Beautiful. A masterpiece of pimping. A testament to what could be achieved in a single Sunday afternoon.
Whilst our baby was given a final chance to rest and glue itself together, we set ourselves the task of creating a monster wrapper – you would have thought that two engineers would be capable of a simple scaling exercise, unfortunately you would be wrong. Much bodging later and the beast lay slumbering in its giant gold paper wrapping. Becky and I retired to finish off the mulled wine and wonder what our work mates would make of the gift we had so lovingly created from them.
