National Chocolate Covered Nut Day!

Happy National Chocolate Covered Nut Day! Yes, today February 25th is National Chocolate Covered Nut Day. Prior to embarking on this National Food Day Friday Project, I had no idea this day even existed. Think of all those February 25ths in the past where I have ignored celebrating. Well not anymore. In honor of the day, here is what I made…

The first decision was what nuts would I celebrate with? While there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of nuts to choose from, I went with these three.

The Macadamia Nut

The Almond

The Peanut (technically it is a legume, but I enjoy them covered in chocolate so I am allowing it)

The name Chocolate Covered Nut Day sounds pretty self explanatory. I did what anyone would do.

I covered my selected nuts in chocolate. Something seemed a little off about this one. Technically these are chocolate covered nuts, but they weren’t worthy of National Chocolate Covered Nut Day, so I decided to temper the chocolate and cover the nuts in melted delicious rich semi sweet chocolate. For all of these nuts, I used 8 oz of semi-sweet chocolate that I tempered. As far as tempering chocolate, I consulted several recipes (Cooking for Engineers, Ghirardelli, and David Lebovitz) on how to do this. For the recipe, there isn’t that much more to it. I stayed true to the holiday and covered the nuts I had selected in Chocolate.

First up, Macadamia Nuts.

Given their large size, I thought these nuts would be perfect to cover completely in chocolate and then set on a cooling rack to dry.

If you do this, I would suggest spraying the rack with non stick spray prior to setting the chocolates down. I failed to do this and ended up with chocolates that were pretty difficult to remove. Next up nut number 2. The Almond.

Almonds are smaller than Macadamia nuts, so I decided to dip them half way in chocolate and let them dry on wax paper. I love the texture of almonds and didn’t want to lose that by covering the entire nut in chocolate, so halfway seemed like the right thing move.  Now for the final nut. The Peanut.

For the peanuts, I decided to make large chocolate clusters. Using a mini muffin pan sprayed with non stick spray, I filled each cup with peanuts. On top of the peanut, I filled the cup with chocolate! I gave it a few shakes to level everything out and then let the peanut chocolate combination set. Once everything was set, I put the tray in the freezer for a few minutes. I found that freezing the tray allowed for easier extraction of the peanut clusters.

The final result were these delicious clusters of peanuts and chocolate!

Take your favorite nuts and cover them in chocolate. There seems like there should be more to it that that, but with the name National Chocolate Nut Day, that is all there is to it! I really don’t need to eat all of these nuts myself, so I am giving them away. My sister’s birthday is Sunday, and she loves Macadamia nuts, so looks like she will be receiving chocolate covered Macadamia nuts ( sorry to ruin the surprise Caitlin, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY! )

Today is also National Clam Chowder Day. I wasn’t in the soup mood, but I won’t ignore the day so here is some delicious Clam Chowder from Neptune’s Net in Malibu, CA.

Whether you celebrate today with chocolate covered nuts, clam chowder, or both! Have a great February 25th!