Peach Melba
I remember a Russell Stover specialty candy they made many, many years ago. It was called “Peach Melba”. It consisted of a wonderful peach/coconut filling covered in rich dark chocolate. Don’t know if they still make that candy anymore or not. My Mom loved that candy so much, we’d walk into the Russell Stover candy shop and she’d buy it 2 or 3 pounds at a time! Dad loved it, too. In fact, she decided to come up with her own recipe so she could make it at home. Hers truly rivaled Russell Stover’s!! But she no longer has that recipe. So I just had to try something similar (low-carb of course). My hubby isn’t so fond of coconut, so I didn’t put the large coconut chip onto these as I had wanted.
My favorite dried fruits have always been dried apricots and peaches but they’re both fairly high in carbs. You sure can’t eat many of them on a low-carb diet. But I thought maybe just a very small piece of fruit, a big nut and just a whisper of delicious chocolate might make a wonderful confection worthy of serving during the holidays, without breaking the carb “bank”. These came out GREAT! I also did some with dried prunes, which I freely admit came out even better than the apricot version! Next time I’m going to put a thin slice of fresh coconut between the fruit and nut on some of these, for ME. I LOVE coconut!
This recipe makes a pretty big batch of the chocolate sauce, around 1¼ cups, so I’m providing the per teaspoon nutritional info and you’ll have to calculate your per serving candy figures because that depends on which fruit you pick, how many you eat or if the sauce is used in other dessert applications how much you used on each serving of that recipe. This recipe is not suitable until you are way up on the fruits rung of Atkins Phase 2 OWL or Maintenance.
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INGREDIENTS FOR CHOCOLATE SHELL COATING:
1 c. sugar free chocolate chips
1 square unsweetened baking chocolate (or 4 squares Lindt 90% chocolate)
¼ c. melted butter
1 T. coconut oil (or 1 T. more butter)
6 drops liquid Splenda (or 2 tsp.vanilla sugar-free syrup)
DIRECTIONS: First, cut each dried peach in half and with your fingers or a knife tip, butterfly each half out flat. Set each piece sticky side up on a small baking sheet (I used a small 11 x 7″ pan as I was just making 10 pieces total). Cut each dried prune into 3 pieces. Butterfly them open and place sticky side up onto your pan. Press 1 almond (or walnut half, or pecan half) on top of each piece of fruit, pressing firmly enough so that the sticky fruit “grabs’ onto the nut and holds is firmly in place.
Next, in a small saucepan, melt the butter in either a double boiler over medium heat. You can use a makeshift one, where you put your saucepan down in a skillet of 1” boiling water (that’s all a double boiler really is anyway). Add the square of chocolate and melt slowly. Add the chips, stirring constantly so the chocolate will stay smooth. You can add more butter (or coconut oil) in small increments if your chocolate is too thick to be like a nice chocolate sauce. Melting/smoothness qualities vary from brand to brand, in my opinion.
ASSEMBLY: Stir the warm chocolate sauce again and with a small spoon, dip about ½ tsp. of sauce onto each candy. Refrigerate or freeze any leftover sauce for future use on more candy recipes or for a chocolate shell coating for vanilla ice cream bars. Pop the pan into the refrigerator or freezer for about 10-15 minutes. When the chocolate is hard to the touch, ENJOY! The chocolate will melt if at room/hand temperature too long, so these should pretty much go from fridge to mouth, but that shouldn’t be a problem for any of you. Never has been for me either. LOL
VARIATIONS: Dried apricots, dried prunes, coconut chips, almonds, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, dried cherries.
NUTRITIONAL INFO FOR SAUCE: Makes about 1¼ cups or 20 T. (60 tsp.). Each tsp. contains:
19 calories
1.79 g fat
.55 g carbs, .21 g fiber, .34 NET CARBS
.20 g protein
< 1 mg. sodium
To help you calculate your per serving info I’m providing below the details on the various dried fruit and nets below:
Buttoni's Low-Carb Recipes 