How to make little chocolate vases

In this post I wanted to share a technique to make little chocolate vases (or dessert recipients). Although there are easier ways of doing this, we have decided to "paint" the vases on baking paper, which is a laborious, but effective technique. If you want an easy way, you can for instance use balloons to make little bowls, which is much faster too! 

You will need to be little more patient, but that's it. You will need some tube shaped glasses to use as a mould. Any tube would do really. If you don't have anything like them toilet paper rolls could be a good substitution. Just remember not to use a glass with a different shape, or it will be impossible to take the chocolate out. 

 

I decided to use this technique because I think that if you have a creative mind it could be use for so many projects. This is one of the easiest shapes you could try to work with. But you could give some nice shape to the borders, or live unpainted spots to make different shapes. Maybe some more videos coming up! 

A tip: the chocolate must be cold when you separate it from the paper and the glass. It is the most critical moment of the whole process.... quite easy to break them!If you break it just a bit it is quite easy to fix though. You just need to use some melted chocolate as "glue" and then give an extra chocolate layer. Since they don't have a smooth finish it will still look fine. But if you completely brake them... well, it will be difficult to solve! 

Around 3 layers it is usually enough, but it depends on the thickness of the layers you are applying. 5 minutes in the fridge between layers is more than enough. 

To fill the little vases we have used berries, nuts, honey and mint (trying to keep it healthy!!) but the possibilities are infinite. Just don't choose any hot filling, because it would melt the chocolate. What would you use? 

Here is the new video. I hope you like it!! 

Spinach crisps, a healthy snack

This post is an idea instead of a recipe, because it is as simple as it gets. We bring you a suggestion for a very healthy snack, what I believe is a fantastic substitution for potato chips. It is spinach based and it tastes yummy. My son, who is just over one year old, loves them. It is a great way to make children eat spinach. We presented a similar idea some time ago, with the baked vegetable post. We are continuously looking for healthy snacks to have at home when you suddenly become hungry, to avoid eating processed food. This one is, no doubt, one of my favourites. 

For me, spinach is the perfect food. You can eat 2 tons and not be worried about your line, they have just 23 calories per 100 g and they have plenty of fibre. As any dark green vegetable, spinach is full of nutrients and it should be part of any healthy diet (we get worried too often about what not to eat, and we forget it is very important to choose wisely what we actually eat!) And well... I love it. Another dark green vegetable that has become fashionable these days is kale. It seems to be a superfood, but I haven't been able to find a recipe that I like using Kale. I already gave up, but I know I will try again! Spinach is a different story. It is so easy to make delicious recipes including them. And I think this is one of them. 

I cooked them with cumin, a flavour combination I have already used in the chickpeas and spinach cupcakes. 

So here it is. A very short video with a suggestion that I hope you like as much as we do. 

Click here to see the video

Quinoa salad with sushi flavour

One day I had a great idea for a recipe. It was kind of an "Eureka moment": I am going to cook sushi with quinoa. Then I googled it.. and I realized lots of people had the same eureka than me. There is even another blogger describing how she went through the same "Eureka process"! 

I just had to try it, so I decided to cook it. Everything seemed to be going fine until I had to cut the sushi rolls. That was a mess... and a disaster. Quinoa doesn't have the same consistency than sushi rice, is much less sticky, and at least for me... that was enough for the recipe not to work. I guess I didn't follow the right recipe, or maybe I didn't have the right quinoa... not sure. I have to confess that I ate the mess. And I really liked it! So I thought... why not to convert the recipe into a salad? And that's how this recipe was born. The good part is that being a salad convert this recipe in a very quick and healthy way to eat something that tastes like sushi, something that you could cook any... Tuesday? 

Quinoa is very fashionable these days among health concious people due to its nutritional value. Its protein content is quite high (including all essential amino acids) it has a relatively low glycemic index and a good part of its fat content is essential fatty acids. And what's best.. it tastes great. You can use to substitute rice in any recipe (that's where the idea of quinoa sushi came from!)

Nori seaweed is another superfood included in this recipe. Its main use is sushi making, but it can be use in many recipes. It has an intense sea flavour, and a high concentration of minerals, vitamins and fibre. 

The wasabi paste and the soy sauce give the final sushi flavour to this salad. We have used avocado, salmon and sesame paste because that's our favourite sushi combination at home. But you can try with any other combination that you fancy!

So click here to see the recipe. Enjoy it! 

Two chocolates cake

Valentine's day is about to arrive and I still didn't publish the post I wanted. I tried couple of times and it didn't work. So I am just publishing this one, because I really want to share this recipe.

 I cooked the cake for my husband's office, so they must be enjoying it there. But it was the perfect excuse to cook it and share it in Cuukinando. Chocolate cheesecake. It sounds (and tastes) like an evil invention.

The contrast between the two chocolates should have been more visible, if you cook it following the instructions it should be the case. It is a really easy cake, basically you just need to mix the ingredients and just bake them.

So here is the video, I hope you like it!

Click here to see the video! 

Chickpeas with chicken, tomatoes and avocado

This is one of those recipes that started with something like...

- What are we having today?
- Let me check what we have.... 

And this is what we had: chickpeas, tomatoes, chicken and avocado. And it became a normal recipe at home. Sometimes we cook it with chicken wings ant its is really tasty too. 

So we are sharing it today with you... just in case you wonder: what are we having today? 

Bangladeshi prawn curry with coconut milk

We are back with a very special guest in Cuukinando... my husband! I think I have mentioned couple of times that he is from Bangladesh. He has opened the door to a whole new world of flavours for me. I remember when I started eating Indian food everything just tasted like "spices", as a whole. But the more a I ate, the more I learnt to appreciate the differences. Today, Indian (or Bangladeshi) food is an integral part of my diet, and I love it. That's why you will find lots of recipes with an Indian touch in this blog. This is, no doubt, one of my favourites. 

Once more, you can find coconut milk as an ingredient (like in the lemon chicken or one of the cold fruit soups). It is a healthy ingredient and we love its flavour. It is not a hot recipe, it just has half a teaspoon of red chilli. If you are not able to tolerate hot food at all, just don't use it. On the contrary, you could add some green chillies if you feel brave!

We posted about how to make home made coconut milk, if you prefer to substitute the can version. Little bit tedious (compared to open a can!) but the flavour is much more natural. Your choice. 

Watch the video here:

Strawberries mousse with dark chocolate and cream served in flutes

It is not February yet and there is already hearts smell in the air. And how do hearts smell? No doubt: like strawberries. We have to admit it, we love Valentine's. Today we bring you the first (yes, the first one, we are working on more posts!) of our Valentine's ideas.

 

 

A very easy recipe. It is a fantastic dessert for a Valentine's dinner at home, or you can use it for any other romantic occasion. I was trying to finish recording with day light and I made the mistake of putting chocolate and cream too early, so my layers are not properly defined! If you wait for 2 hours (better if you can do more than 4) it should look better than this.

 

It is a healthy option too. We just use sweetener (we try to avoid sugar... most of the time!) but you can use sugar if you prefer it. You could just rely on strawberries sweetness too, I didn't try, but I am sure it would be nice.

 

Well, you just need 2 minutes to watch our video, we hope you like it!

 

 

Savoury cupcakes: chickpeas and spinach

 

We were in a mood of eating a classic dish today: spinach and chickpeas. And we were in a mood of eating cupcakes. So we decided to combine both and we cooked chickpeas and spinach cupcakes. A traditional flavour combination presented in an original way.

 

 

We used mascarpone and fresh herbs for the frosting, but if you prefer, you can leave them as muffins and skip the frosting, the are good that way too.

 

Do you want to know how to cook them? You just need a couple of minutes (as always!) to watch our new video. We hope you enjoy it.

 

 

Strawberries bouquet

And finally, after a long holiday, we are back. And we do it with a healthy option, because after Christmas we couldn't think about anything else. We have to somehow try to compensate!

I personally like to put some fresh fruit in a buffet when we have people around. This is just an original way of doing it. We made a bouquet with strawberries and chocolate coated blueberries.

As long as you use a chocolate with a high cocoa percentage and a low sugar content this is a very healthy option. We can't forget that chocolate is full of nutrients, a fantastic excuse to eat it (as if we needed one!)

You already know we like doing easy things, and this presentation is not different in that sense. We remind you that we already made a video about how to make a rose with an apple.

We hope you like it. We will try not to disappear again for so long! so... see you soon!

Click here to see the new video.