Super-fruity dark chocolate tiffin

Rich and buttery, this dark chocolate tiffin is bursting with dried and candied fruits. A real treat for adults and kids alike. 

My daughter Kipper loves helping out in the kitchen, but when she was little, her enthusiasm definitely outweighed her skill! As a result, the recipes we made together needed to be fairly straightforward. Also, in the name of maintaining enthusiasm, there needed to be delicious spoons to lick, and tasty end results. 

Chocolate tiffin – an indulgent treat 

With all of that in mind, we created these simple melt-and-stir fruity chocolate tiffin squares. I love chocolate tiffin, because it’s so easy to make and you can customise it by adding all kinds of goodies to the basic mixture. In this case, I spotted an opportunity to use up some of the dried and candied fruits that were lurking in my pantry!

We’d brought a selection box of dried and candied fruits back from a holiday in Italy. Despite my nibbling away at them, there were still quite a lot left! Also, my baking cupboard is typically groaning with dried fruit of many different kinds. It’s good to keep everything moving and reasonably fresh.

A cornucopia of fruit!

When preparing to make this tiffin, we got everything out, and realised we had ten different sorts of dried and candied fruit! They were:

• Dried apricots
• Candied pineapple
• Dried figs
• Candied citrus peel
• Dried mango
• Sultanas/raisins
• Dried papaya
• Candied kiwi
• Dried cranberries
• Glace cherries

Goodness me! I had no idea that such a range of preserved fruits was available. 

Other tiffin ingredients

Of course you can’t make tiffin with dried fruits alone! However chocolate tiffin is a wonderful treat that comes together easily from things you’re likely to have at home. As well as the dried/candied fruits, you’ll also need:

• Dark chocolate
• Butter, or vegan spread if you want the tiffin to be vegan/dairy free
• Plain biscuits – I like to use shortbread, petit beurre or rich tea, but any plain biscuit will do
• White chocolate for decoration – you can get dairy-free white chocolate, or you can skip this altogether!

Chocolate tiffin = Kitchen fun

Just as I’d hoped, the first time Kipper and I made this super-fruity chocolate tiffin, we had a great time! She tried her hand at a new job – pulverising biscuits to crumbs in the mini chopper – and also had a go at chopping some of the softer fruits with a not-very-sharp knife.

Naturally, she came into her own for the stirring, and again for the spoon licking.

Now she is bigger, she can pretty much manage the whole thing herself. Hooray!

Thinly spread

I spread the chocolate tiffin mixture quite thinly, as I guessed that it would be quite rich! It’s about 1cm (½ inch) thick, and I cut it into 16 pieces. Small, but perfectly formed! 

After the chocolate tiffin had set in the fridge, we gave it a thin layer of dark chocolate and some white chocolate drizzle for decoration. You can skip the white chocolate, but I do think it looks nice, don’t you?

Chocolate tiffin – with tea, coffee, or whatever…

We very much enjoyed our tiffin with a cup of tea for elevenses, and Kipper loves to have a small square in her lunchbox – it’s mostly fruit, right?! It makes a lovely after-dinner treat with a cup of coffee or a glass of something stronger, too. 

Gifting your tiffin

A fancy box of these pretty tiffin squares would be a very welcome gift. Make some for birthdays, for your Mum for Mothers’ Day, or as a sweet and heartfelt thank-you. They’ll always be appreciated!

Makes 16 small squares.

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📖 Recipe

More chocolate treat recipes

If you enjoyed this tiffin you should also try

• melt-and-stir chocolate biscoff crispy cake bites
• 3-ingredient Nutella shortbread biscuits
• delicious double chocolate muesli cookies

I am entering this delicious chocolate tiffin recipe into the following:
Let’s cook for mothers day at Simply Sensational Food.
Treat Petite, organised by Cakeyboi (who also hosts this month) and The Baking Explorer. Tea Time Treats, organised by Karen at Lavender & Lovage and Janie at The Hedgecombers (who is hosting this month) on the theme of biscuits & cookies. And, since I managed to use up a whole load of odds and ends of dried fruit, the No Waste Food Challenge, hosted by Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary.