Salted chocolate pots with caramel sauce

So it turns out my grogginess yesterday wasn't only caused by an excess of wine on my birthday, but it was in fact caused by me being ill. I'm sure the wine didn't help, but unless this is a two day hangover that causes a cold and a chesty cough, I'm definitely just ill.  Fortunately I have a very lovely fiancé to take care of me (he's literally making me noodle soup as I write this!), so I shall be spending the day on the sofa, probably watching a continuous stream of rom-coms. I've already brought my duvet downstairs, which immediately makes me feel a little better.

Luckily, my illness has not dampened my excitement about this recipe. Although I can't really eat these right now (I'm sure you don't want me to go into too much detail about my symptoms, but needless to say, eating a load of dairy is probably not what I need right now), I'm very much looking forward to returning to chocolate bliss once I'm better.

These salted chocolate pots are the little treats I made myself to celebrate my birthday. I hunted all over the internet to get inspiration for the recipe, but every single version I found contained egg - and although I'm sure those recipes work just fine, I couldn't be bothered to faff around scrambling eggs, throwing the whole lot in the bin, scrambling them once again, and finally getting it right on the tenth try. So instead, I improvised, and made my own, egg-free chocolate pots. And let me tell you - they definitely don't need egg. My simple recipe of butter, chocolate and cream (yep, all three of those...) worked just perfectly.

You could just make plain old chocolate pots, which would be awesome, but the things that really make this recipe spectacular are the gooey caramel sauce underneath, and the pinch of fleur de sel on top (that's sea salt to us common folk). It might seem odd to add salt to chocolate, but it's all the rage these days, and I can see why - every time a grain of salt lands on your tongue, it gives a little tang that offsets the super sweet chocolate just perfectly. It's a really amazing combination! Make sure you dig right through the layers to get a bit of everything.

I used this fleur de sel (no, spellcheck, I do not mean flour de del. Please stop correcting me) from Salts Worldwide, who have an amazing range of exotic salts, including sea salt, Himalayan salt, red salt, and black salt. They're all natural and are rich in minerals. I definitely need to experiment more with ingredients like this rather than sticking with the same old ingredients I always use (chickpeas, spinach and mushrooms, anyone?). So feel free to throw some recipe suggestions at me!

Have you ever tried salted chocolate or salted caramel? What did you think?

Make sure you go and check out Salts Worldwide and their amazing range of exotic salts here.

For another easy, chocolatey dessert, try my chocolate banoffee puffs!