How to make a chocolate covered strawberries

Summer is almost here and so is sun, fun and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. My friend Tania* thinks there is nothing better then start your day with a light desert :) she loves strawberries and always makes small batches of this almost guilt-free desert when berries are in season.

Chocolate cover strawberries are quick to make, delicious and look fabulous. All you need to make it is some fresh strawberries with stems, white and milk chocolate and of course, some cooking inspiration.  

As with all berries, this is quickly perishable desert so prepare it on the day of serving.

Here is how to make it:

1. Rinse your berries and dry them thoroughly on a paper towel.

 

2. Use chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate. Melt your white and milk chocolate separate, in a double boiler, stirring until it is melted completely. If you'd like, add about 1/2 to 1 tea spoon of neutral tasting cooking oil to make chocolate more flexible. Do not cover your chocolate to avoid a liquid condensation and dripping into your pan.

3. Remove the chocolates from the heat. Hold your prepared berries by the stem and dip them in either white or milk chocolate. Place on prepared baking sheet lined with a parchment or wax paper. Use the contrast color chocolate and a fork or culinary bag to drizzle over your berries.

 

4. Place strawberries in a refrigerator for about 30 minutes to an hour until the chocolate is set. Your fabulous chocolate covered strawberries are ready to serve!

*Tania is one of the owners of the cozy guest house by the Black Sea. If you'd like to have a summer vacation right next to the one of the best Crimean beaches, Belyaus, please  contact her through her Instagram (@belayus_homesweethome) She will be happy to hear from you!

 

Irresistible brownies for Valentines

I love brownies. This is probably, the only desert I can not ignore if I am near them.

I try to stay away from sweets so I don't allow myself to bake these often, but when I do, it is always happily welcomed by family and friends.

 

The recipe is easy and quick to make. Here is what you need to make these:

Hazelnut pecan chocolate chips brownies

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (approx. 170 gr.)

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup hazelnut, chopped

1/2 cup pecan, chopped

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, divided (1/2 cup for dough +1/2 for topping)

Preheat oven to 350'F. Melt butter in microwave and mix with sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, eggs and vanilla. Stir with spoon until butter is well blended and smooth. Stir in nuts and 1/2 cup of chocolate chips.

Spray a rectangular baking dish with a non-stick cooking spray (mine is about 13"by 9" and about 2" tall). Spread the butter in the dish and sprinkle evenly with 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. Bake 30 to 35 minutes.

Let it cool and cut into rectangular pieces as desired. Dust it with powdered sugar.

Enjoy and happy Valentines Day!

Hazelnut rugelach

We did not bake much this holiday season, just a couple of my favorite treats. One of them is hazelnut rugelach. This recipe seems to be complicated but it's really not and it's also a very delicious. 

I got this from Good Housekeeping magazine several years ago and I have baked rugelach every winter ever since.

I used some dried plums and cherries for my recipe and switch hazelnuts for pecans and it tasted as good as the original one.

 

For the complete recipe go to Good Housekeeping or follow the instructions below:

Rugelach Dough

2 cup(s) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon(s) salt

1 cup(s) (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened

1 package(s) (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

Fruit and Nut Filling

1 cup(s) hazelnuts, (filberts), toasted, skinned, and chopped

1/2 cup(s) dried pitted plums, (prunes), chopped

1/2 cup(s) dried tart cherries or cranberries, chopped

1/4 cup(s) (packed) light brown sugar

Spice Sugar

3/4 cup(s) granulated sugar

1 tablespoon(s) ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon(s) ground cloves

9 tablespoon(s) apricot jam

Directions

Prepare Rugelach Dough: On waxed paper, combine flour and salt. In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat butter and cram cheese until creamy, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Reduce speed to low; gradually beat in flour mixture just until blended, occasionally scraping bowl. Divide dough into 3 equal pieces; flatten each into a disk. Wrap each disk in plastic warp and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until dough is firm enough to roll. (Or place dough in freezer for 1 hour if using butter, 1 1/2 hours if using margarine.)

Meanwhile, prepare Fruit and Nut Filling: In medium bowl, combine all filling ingredients.

Prepare Spice Sugar: In small bowl, combine sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line large cookie sheet with foil; grease foil.

Sprinkle work surface with 2 tablespoons spice sugar. Place 1 piece dough on top of sugar; turn over to coat both sides. Roll dough into 12-inch round, turning round over a few times and sprinkling work surface with 2 more tablespoons spice sugar to coat both sides.

Spread top of round with 3 tablespoons jam, then sprinkle with about 3/4 cup filling, leaving 1/2-inch border around edge. With knife, cut dough into 24 equal wedges. Starting at curved edge, roll up each wedge, jelly-roll fashion. Place rugelach, 1 inch apart, on cookie sheet, point side down.

Bake rugelach 20 to 25 minutes or until bottoms are browned. Immediately remove rugelach to wire rack to cool.

Repeat with remaining dough, spice sugar, jam, and filling.

Enjoy!

Pecan Pie recipe

I was trying to stay away from a sweets for a while but it is simply not possible. I am too weak :) Our favorite this Fall became a Pecan Pie, store bought and home made. Any way it's delicious and very sweet-tooth-satisfying.

The last one I baked was gone in a day and everyone is wondering, what actually is happened to the pie since each person had just a small slice?

I guess, no one can control their portion size these days :)

Here is the recipe if you'd like to make it at home.

Ingredients:

1 9" refrigerated Pillsbury pie crust

6 table spoons unsalted butter

1 cup maple syrup

3/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Place pie crust into 9" glass dish. Fill the pie shell with pecans.

Make the filing:

In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, maple syrup and butter. Heat over medium heat until butter melts and remove from the heat.

In a medium bowl, beat eggs until frothy. Add vanilla and salt.

Gradually beat in hot syrup mixture, stirring constantly.

Pour the mixture into the pie shell.

Bake at 350'F for 1 hour. Let it chill and refrigerate overnight before serving.

Enjoy!

Napoleon cake

This delicious layered Napoleon cake is very popular in the countries of ex USSR. I am not sure where the name came from. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte himself probably never heard about this desert. But nevertheless, the cake is delicious and worth the time spent.

 There are hundreds of variations out there but I would like to share this recipe my mother used to cook.

It is a little time consuming when you are cooking it from scratch, several hours, but you don't have to make it all in one day.

The cake you will be making is large so be ready to share :)

The ingredients:

For the dough:

1 bottle of light beer, 12 oz

400 gr cold butter (you can use either salted or unsalted. I tried to bake with both and I liked the salted one better)

4 cups all purpose flour

For the custard cream:

4 cups milk

5 large eggs

4 tablespoon flour

2 1/2 cup sugar

1 table spoon vanilla

Step 1. Make the dough.

Add the flour in a mixing bowl, add the butter by cutting it with the knife into flour until you will get an even crumbled texture.

Add the beer and mix it all together. Knead the dough well until smooth.

Divide the dough into 8 even rectangular portions and place in a clean container. Cover with film and place it in refrigerator for at least 1 hour. This part can be made and set overnight.

Step 2. Make the custard crème.

Mix the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the flour and mix all together.

Heat the milk in a pan but do not boil. Add small portions of the hot milk to the mixing bowl, stirring as you add it, until it is all added.

Put the blended mixture into a large pot and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, until it boils. Turn the heat off, add and stir the vanilla into the mix. At this point your custard cream should be nice and smooth but if it is not just use the blender or mixer to make it an even texture. Leave your crème to chill.

Step 3. Bake your cake layers.

Preheat your oven to 400'F. Take out one piece of the dough, and roll it on a floured surface to the rectangular shape. Apply even pressure when rolling and add flour as you go to avoid sticking to the surface. Make it as thin as about 1/8".  Poke holes all over it with the fork to avoid air bubbles while baking.

Bake 1st layer until golden. It may take 3 to 7 minutes or longer, depending on oven. While the first one is baking, roll the second portion of dough to the same size rectangular. Take the layer #1 out of oven and arrange it on the flat baking sheet. Bake #2 layer. Continue the same process until you will bake all 8 dough portions. 1 of the layers will be used for crumbled topping so you can bake it a little more to make it crumble easier. Stack 7 layers on top of each other and let them cool.

Crumble the layer you were preparing for the topping. The easiest way to do this is to break it into pieces and place it into large zip lock bag. Zip it and roll with the rolling pin to get large crumbles.

Step 4. Arrange the cake.

Prepare a cutting board large enough to accommodate the layers. Place first layer on the board and generously spread the custard on top. Cover with the second layer and repeat with crème. Continue in the same manner with all 7 layers. Spread the last portion of custard on top of 7 layer. Spread the crumbled layer on top.

To make the cake flat get a piece of foil large enough to cover the top of dessert. Place the foil on crumbled top, then place a large baking sheet on top and add some weight to apply an even pressure on the cake surface. Let it sit for about 4 hours.

When you take the weight off your cake it should be about 1 1/2" to 2" thick. Now you can cut the sides to make it a perfect rectangular. I love to eat the leftover sides, they are the sweetest :)

Slice your cake and store in covered container in refrigerator until ready to serve.

This cake is great for the family events, elegant dinning and of course, for a tea party. Enjoy and please let me know how you like it!

Sweet holidays

These last several days in between the holidays are so delicious. They are full of sweet desserts and you don't care any more about your diet. Even thought you promised yourself to start a healthier lifestyle tomorrow. Well, 2013 is almost here so why not start that diet & exercise program on January 2nd?

 I am still planning to make that delicious holiday cake fromAleksa's blog for New Year eve celebration and for the smooth transaction to a new year the thai sweet rice and mango dessert from Marina's blog, and I am done with sweets. At least, until the other good reason to try a new recipe will come alone :) 

Christmas butter cookies

These cookies are so simple but taste so good. They remind me of shortbread cookies and perfect for the Christmas party.

How to make them:

1 cup butter at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar
2 tea spoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped hazelnuts

Powdered sugar for dusting

Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla, flour and salt. Fold in nuts. Knead a dough to make it smooth. Place the dough ball in refrigerator for 2 hours.

Preheat your oven to 350'F. Line the baking sheet with foil. If your dough is too hard cut it with knife to form a strips and then cut it to even pieces. Roll the pieces into balls about the same size and place on ungreased foil about 1" apart.

 Bake at 350'F for about 15 minutes or until golden brown on the bottom. Let them cool completely and dust them with the powdered sugar.

Enjoy and have fun at Christmas!

Best-ever banana bread

There is a grocery store near by which has huge amount of bananas. The regular price is not very cheap but from time to time the store is overwhelmed with bananas so they are boxing the ones which are pretty ripe and selling them at discounted rate of $2 a box. When we purchased a box full of bananas for the first time we just had a monkey week. No one wanted bananas for a long time after that.

I was looking for baking ideas and tried many good recipes of banana breads and muffins. So the irony was that the best one was printed on the bag of Gold Medal flour I used to bake these.

It's called The Best-Ever Banana Bread and it truly is. I am baking mini breads and freezing them so it's ready when I need it.

I am using mini loaf pans I purchased at Walmart and it works the best for me. There are 4 pans in that set which is perfect to use for the amount of batter you are getting.

Here is how to bake it.

You will need:

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter at room temperature

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

4 over ripe mashed bananas

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup walnuts

cooking spray, 4 mini loafs pans, electric mixer

Preheat oven to 350'F and spray mini pans with cooking spray.

Mix sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add liquids (vanilla, eggs, buttermilk) and mashed bananas, beat with the mixer until smooth. Stir in salt, soda and flour and beat with mixer until the batter is smooth. Stir in nuts and pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake at 350'F for 1 hour or until ready. Cool in pans and turn this over. The breads should fall right out!

Carrot and Zucchini bars

Summer is here and I'd like to get as much fresh fruits and vegetables as possible. The nectarine season is over in our garden but we celebrated our harvest with lots of ripe fruit right off the tree and fresh baked nectarine pies.

I renewed my subscription to the Better Homes and Gardens magazine and I received a couple of wonderful gifts, 2 recipe books. Everything looks so good but I was anxious to try this carrot and zucchini bars recipe so much. The recipe is very simple, nutritious and there is 2 1/2 cups of shredded vegetables in them!

I change a recipe slightly, I used a yellow squash instead of green but the bars turned out just wonderful. So I baked them, let them cool and spread a cream cheese citrus frosting on top.
It's very good, try it!

Here is the recipe:

Carrot and Zucchini Bars

Ingredients for the dough:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 1/2 cups shredded carrot

1 medium zucchini, shredded (1 cup)

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup cooking oil

1/4 cup honey

1 teaspoon vanilla

Ingredients for the citrus-cream cheese frosting:

1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon lemon or orange peel, finely shredded

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, ginger, and baking soda. In another large bowl stir together eggs, carrot, zucchini, brown sugar, raisins, walnuts, oil, honey, and vanilla. Add carrot mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until combined.

Spread batter into an ungreased 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Bake about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.

Make citrus-cream cheese frosting: In a medium mixing bowl beat cream cheese and powdered sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Stir in lemon or orange peel.

Frost cake with citrus-cream cheese frosting and cut into bars.

Homemade Valentine candy, day 2

Day 2 of making Valentines candies - they  will look like this in the end:

I took my mixture out of refrigerator and it looked like this:

 Gorgeous. As chocolate can be.

So, what you need now -

small size pretty baking paper cups

1/2 cup cacao for dusting

wax paper

cookie tray

 Line your cookie tray with the wax paper. With a tablespoon, make equal sized mounts of chocolate mixture and place them on your cookie tray leaving about 1" of space between them. This is your future candies, so count how many you will get.

Place the same amount of the baking cups on a tray or a flat plate. Pour your cacao on a separate plate. Now - this is messy. 

Dust your hands with cocoa and roll each portion of your mixture to form a ball. Carefully place it in a baking cup. Continue until all the rolls are dusted, perfect in shape and asking to be eaten :)

Refrigerate them to harden. I have to say, mine are little too soft and I am thinking about freezing them. So it might be because I used a fat free whipping cream instead of heavy whipping cream. Well, at least I will know.

Nevertheless, they taste very good to us chocolate and coffee lovers :)

Treat for your Valentine

I am making a secret little Valentine treat for my husband. I've decided on homemade chocolate truffles. He is not a big fan of chocolate but he can eat a candy or two from time to time. To me, Valentine is about chocolate, so chocolate it is.

This type of candy are very easy to make and you can play with the ingredients to make your treat special. You will need a couple of days to make them since the mix require some chilling time. I am making it with you - so I am on a day 1 :)

Here is how - day 1

 The ingredients:

12 oz small size semisweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup whipping cream

1 tea spoon instant coffee

1 table spoon of rum or your Valentines' favorite liquor.  

Place the chocolate chips in a bowl. Boil the whipping cream, add instant coffee and pour the liquid over the chocolate chips while boiling hot. Quickly mix with a  wooden spoon to make the mixture smooth. Add rum and mix thoroughly.  Let it cool and  chill it in refrigerator overnight.

We will continue tomorrow :)

Strawberries and cream sponge cake

This cake screams summer! Right now is the perfect time to make this cake as strawberries are at their peak season in many areas and inexpensive to buy.

I got the recipe from the new issue of Making magazine which can be found for sale right now at Barnes and Nobles. I love to use seasonal fruits and berries in my cooking so I was just happy to find another great and somewhat healthy idea for a nice desert to eat with a cup of tea.

The cake is made with whole fresh strawberries on top and cut strawberries in a center. Then you add fresh homemade whip cream and you get the perfect fluffy light cake for a summer tea party!

I followed the recipe but used fresh whip cream I bought from our local bakery. The bakery is making a fresh load every morning and I am not a proud owner of a standing mixer so why not simplify the process! I used about 1 pound of the ready made whip cream.

The cake is easy to make and taste great. Try it for a wow result at your party!

Grape Clafoutis

This is a very easy fruity dessert I am cooking all year round but it is especially good for a summer light suppers.

I've modified this recipe from traditional Russian apple cake to adjust it to my husband's taste and he loved it from the first bite!

The best part, the ingredients you making this cake with are essential and can be found in almost any kitchen (if you are cooking at home!)
Ingredients:

4 cups seedless stemless grapes
5 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
butter flavored cooking spray
flat rectangular baking dish (mine is 9 1/2 by 13 1/2 and 2" deep)
powdered sugar (optional)
How to make it:

Preheat oven to 385'F.

Blend together eggs & sugar, add vanilla & baking powder. Add flour. Add grapes to a bowl, mix well to cover grapes with liquid dough. Pour mix to a prepared baking dish (sides & bottom should be sprayed with cooking spray).

Bake at 385'F for 35 to 40 minutes (time can vary depending on oven but you can always check readiness with a toothpick). Let it cool and slice it with a pizza slicer or a sharp knife.

Sprinkle each slice with a powdered sugar right before serving (optional)

Enjoy and please let me know how do you like it!