#chocolatedesserts

Sally’s Baking Addiction: July, 2019 Challenge: No-Bake Cheesecake Jars👩🏻‍🍳

Boy, did I get lucky this month! 😲 Sally set a really easy and fast challenge for July, which I appreciated! I had a lot going on for the month of July, so a quick, No-bake Cheesecake dessert was perfect timing😊

Three layers, all simple and tasty. First was the two ingredient graham cracker crust.

1 cup (about 8 graham crackers) were crushed in a food processor until crumbs formed, then 2 tablespoons of melted butter were drizzled in until a sandy mix formed.

Sally used mason jars, but I chose to use some mini dessert cups. These were filled with the crust and set aside until the filling was ready.

The filling is just as simple. 1 cup of cold, heavy cream was whipped into stiff peaks and set aside.

Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, 8 oz. of cream cheese, 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 2 Tablespoons of Greek Yogurt (Sally used sour cream), 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, lemon zest and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla were mixed until smooth.

Then the whipped cream was gently folded into the cream cheese mixture.

This was spooned over the crust filled cups.

I put these into the fridge to set while I made the toppings. I couldn’t decide between chocolate, strawberry or blueberry-so I made all three 😂

All three of these sauce recipes are from Sally’s site and are super easy to make as well. And, bonus! They are all great over yogurt or ice cream 😋

All that was left was to add the toppings

Chocolate 🍫

Strawberry 🍓

Blueberry and lemon 🍋

These were delicious!

Next time I will add more of the crust!

I have a very busy August as well, so I hope I can keep up with Sally❤️

Sally’s Baking Addiction: February, 2019 Challenge: Homemade Chocolate Truffles 🍫🍬 😋

February, Valentine’s Day, the month to celebrate chocolate 🍫❤️!

Sally’s baking challenge this month was to make chocolate truffles. This was incredibly easy! Only two ingredients, good quality chocolate and heavy cream. 😋 She did give us the option to add a tablespoon of butter for a better consistency and vanilla for flavor, both of which I did add 😉, but you could do this with only the chocolate and cream.

The first step is to finely chop up the chocolate, using a serrated knife works really well. The finer you chop the chocolate the faster the hot cream will melt it.

I chose semi sweet chocolate to make sure that the truffles would not be too sweet, but you could use dark or milk chocolate. Sally provides some additional instructions for different cocoa content.

I added the tablespoon of butter and, carefully, heated the heavy cream in the microwave. When the cream was warm (but not boiling!), it was poured over the mixture and let to sit for 5 min.

I then stirred the mixture until it was smooth and shiny.

The chocolate has to be completely cooled before you can scoop it out and roll it into balls. This was faster when I poured it into a 9 X 9 pan and placed it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

After it was solid, I scored it into 36 squares, which made smaller truffles than what Sally’s recipe stated.

I went with 6 toppings: chopped walnuts, unsweetened cocoa power, chocolate sprinkles, colored sprinkles and gold and white sanding sugar.

One bit of advice that Sally gave was to scoop the chocolate and allow it to dry out for 20 minutes before rolling them into balls. This helped make a sticky job a little easier.

They were small, but so tasty 😋

The inside was soft, and the toppings provided a nice crunchy element. They were fine at room temperature as well, of course, we still have snow on the ground around here😂 so “room temp” may be a tad low!

This was one of Sally’s fastest recipes! Next time I think I might add a liqueur flavor instead of vanilla. They would be perfect for the holidays 🌟

Sally’s Baking Addiction: September, 2018 Challenge: Choux Pastry

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to complete the September challenge this month! The last two months of the summer have been a whirlwind! In a good way!

I have not made pate a choux since culinary school, and am not a big fan of cream puffs, or eclairs (and neither are my family members) so my first thought was, “should I try to fit this in?” But, I have not missed one of Sally’s challenges yet, so I had to try. It turns out, my hubby’s coworkers did like them, so it was worth it.

Sally provided us with the basic recipe and then presented us with our many, many options. I had a tough time deciding between cream puffs and eclairs, so I opted to make some of each.

Then the flavor combinations: Oh my! So many to choose from. I kept it simple and went with the classic chocolate and peanut butter duo. So….

First I made her peanut butter cream cheese mousse, to fill both the eclairs and puffs.

Then the choux dough. Sally has a great video to help with this if you are intimidated by the process. Honestly, it takes very few ingredients, and is not that hard.

Both of these went into the fridge for later, I had to go for a run! When I got back I piped the shapes onto parchment lined baking sheets. A word of caution here!! If you refridgerate the choux dough, let it come to room temp before piping, your life will be easier, I promise. Also, I did not have the tips that Sally recommended, so my final products were “mini” eclairs and cream puffs!

Into the oven they went…

Even though they were small, they puffed up nicely. While they were cooling, I decided to pipe some chocolate decorations from a little melting chocolate, that I always have around for just such an occasion!

I made a few pans of different designs, just for fun

Once the pasteries had cooled, I set about filling them with the peanut butter mousse mixture. For the cream puffs, I just sliced the top 1/3 off and piped in the filling. The eclairs were “injected” using a number 2 Wilton piping tip.

The eclairs were filled and dipped into some chocolate ganache.

The eclairs were so bright and shiny that I decided to not decorate them further.

They were small, but tasty! The perfect two bites with a cup of coffee!!

I am glad that I took the time to fit this one in, I kept my Sally streak going and some people really enjoyed them, what more can I ask!!

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