I have been preparing Christmas presents the last days and now the whole thing seems to have a visible end. I still have some things to prepare, but here is the current result of my work.
May I introduce to you: garlic oil, chili oil, caramel cream, hot cocoa mix, vanilla extract, two different kinds of gingerbread, apple truffles, raspberry truffles, cranberry dark chocolate truffles and bounty truffles. More will be prepared soon.
The next two weeks I will be travelling a little, but be sure that I am preparing new posts with own recipes for you. I hope you have joyful holidays.
See you next year, my dears.
So glad I can present to you a recipe that used to make my face lighten up when I was a child. My Mum used to make it every now and then and I was always amazed by how a sticky brown mass looking like nothing turned into a sweet bar of chocolate that looked like meat. Today I do not eat meat any more, but I feel like I am thrown back into my childhood when seeing (and eating) it.
I was very excited, when an Italian friend of mine told me they use to make this treat in Italy. I asked for the recipe, because my Mum never taught me how to prepare a chocolate salame. So here we go.
It is quite easy to prepare and the result looks realistic with no afford. You just have to let the fridge do the work. I used half of the original recipe and got out two sausages with the length of about 25 cm (10´´). As I assume this is quite much, still, I will let you know the instructions for this amount of it.
Chocolate Salame:
100 g butter
125 g shortbread cookies
100 g sugar
50 g dark cocoa powder
1 egg
1 pinch cinnamon
Crumble the cookies by smashing them with a rolling pin in a freezer bag.
Melt the butter in a medium-sized pan over low heat. Stir in sugar, cocoa powder and egg. Then put in all the cookies and mix well with a spoon.
Lay out a piece of aluminium foil and pour half of the chocolate mass in a line on it. Roll in the foil and shape it with your hands until it looks like – well – a salame. If you want to, you can put sprinkles or chopped nuts on the surface, so it does not stick to the foil. Otherwise dust it with some powdered sugar. Wrap the salame up in aluminium foil and let it chill in the fridge for at least two hours.
Then cut it into slices like a sausage ;)
Usually there are two kinds of people in the world: the heart attack kind – a meat-lover, eating tons of butgers, fries, pizza and doener, and the diabetes kind – a sweet-lover, feeding him- or herself chocolate, pastry and candy.
BUT
In our world of progress, you can be both. Increase the risk of a heart attack AND diabetes at the same time, have a CRONUT.
Cronuts are a hit in the USA. Something so simple yet new is kind of booming on blogs, reports and in magazines. The hype made me curious and I was very interested in trying the new sensation.
I did some research on the topic and it turned out that a “cronut” is basically just fried croissant dough which you can buy in a can at your local department store.
So I just bought two cans and tried to make them. They turned out quite cute and the taste was… well, you know the taste of a croissant. After the frying, I put some vanilla sugar glaze on top which gave them a little sweeter flavour.
Actually, I was not that impressed as I had expected a burst of flavour. But I am not in New York and have only tried my amateur version.
On my trip to Frankfurt a. M., I accidently found a bakery offering cronuts. I had one together with a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks and, well, the taste was pretty close to my own ones. At home, I had left out the filling. And the rolling in sugar. Too much diabetes. But it tasted fine. So if you are still interested in the taste of cronuts – make a bunch at home! I will give you the instructions. You decide whether you like them or not.
Cronuts:
2 cans of croissant dough
sugar icing
fat (for frying), I used sunflower oil
Release the dough from the can and roll it out. squeeze the triangular perforation with your fingers so the wholes disappear. Divide the rectangular layers. Put on one layer a thin waterfilm by using a brush. Place another on top and go on like this until you finish one can. Roll the dought thinner with a rolling pin. Brush half of the surface with water, then fold and roll again, until the layers stick together. Now cut out circles with holes using cookie cutters of different size or a donut cutter. I used a small cookie cutter with a diameter of 5 cm (2´´) and a cupcake cutter.
Heat oil in a deep dish. You know it is hot enough, if there are little air bubbles coming up when you put in a wooden skewer.
Gently put in the cut out cronuts and fry. You might have to turn them around if you don’t have a deep fryer. They need to be amber brown outsie.
Place them on paper towels to cool. I had my bf brushing a little milk with butter on top. Decorate your sweeties with icing and sprinkles.