How to Make Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

This is quick and easy and tastes great. A good alternative to sugar laden store bought ones. I made some this morning for an afternoon treat for us. It was great.
I asked my husband if it needed to be sweeter and he said, "No. Not at all. It's perfect!" You can try it for yourself and see. It truly was sweet enough but if you like things very sweet you could add a little more sugar to the mix. This can also be made without any sugar at all.
Strawberry Frozen Yogurt
2 cups plain yogurt
1 cup organic strawberries, chopped
1/4 tsp stevia extract powder (this kind)
12 drops stevia liquid extract (this kind)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp sugar (2 if you like things very sweet)
Blend all the ingredients together in a blender or with a hand stick blender until fairly smooth. Freeze according to your ice cream maker instructions
If you don't have an ice cream maker, you can use a metal or glass bowl (careful if using glass that you use only glass that can stand the freezer). If using the bowl method, place the yogurt mixture in the bowl and place in the freezer, stirring every 15-20 minutes until it reaches the desired thickness.
Sugar-Free Version:
Follow the recipe and method above but leave out the sugar and add 1 to 2 stevia packets (a mild form of stevia). Remember, it will get sweeter the longer it sets and the stevia plays up the natural sugars in the fruit. If you use too much stevia it will be bitter or have a weird taste. I have found using a combination of forms of stevia help to prevent that.
Eating cake out of jar might be my new favorite sweet-related activity. Not only are they adorable, but they are the perfect boozy dessert to share on a weekend picnic. That's what I would do anyway.
This cake is moist and rich on its own, but after you drench it in whiskey-butter sauce and top it with vanilla butter cream, well, it's probably the naughtiest thing any jar has contained...

Passover Dinner-Chocolate Fondant

The unfortunate fire that I told you about in my last post happened 3 hours after Daniel, Avi’s brother’s girlfriend and me finished preparing 3 kinds of desserts for the Passover evening dinner. We made macaroons (the American coconut cookies), macarons – it was my first time and they came out really good and with a great chewy center, as they should.
It’s a real shame I can’t share it with you guys… But it’s a great reason for making my second batch sooner than I planned! We also made a no-sugar cheesecake for one of our dinner guests. So all in all, after the fire, I remained with no dessert for the Passover dinner.
That was definitely a situation that had to be fixed, and so I made this great chocolate fondant. I followed the recipe of a dear Israeli blogger friend of mine – Maya from Bazek Alim, adapting the recipe to fit the flourless Passover restriction. It’s a great recipe and it turned out great even in the Passover version!
Thanks Maya for a yummy recipe, and also many thanks for oferring me to come and cook with you at your home! This is a really generous offer, and I think it also could be lots of fun.
I’ll be in touch with you about that. Since I baked it at my mother’s house, in an oven I didn’t bake in before, I baked one test fondant, it took 12 mins in her oven and the result was perfect!
A liquid chocolate center wrapped up in a cloudy-like chocolate soft crust… So much YUM!
Unfortunately, thinking I’ve mastered the fondant art in just one try, when I baked the ones for the guests, I left them 2 mins more in the oven (each one of them was bigger than the test one), which resulted in a very small liquid center. It was still very tasty, no doubt about that, but it left me with a bit of a sad feeling for succeding on the test round and failing (or succeeding less) on the important round.
Baking time is crucial in this recipe.
You should bake your fondant just until its margins have stabilized, but the center is still soft and hasn’t firmed up yet. It’s best to spend the last 3-4 mins near the oven, keeping a close eye on these little pieces of yummyness. Baking one of them in advance in order to test the time it takes in your oven is highly recommended.
Ingredients:
150 gr bitersweet chocolate
150 gr butter
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
4 1/2 Tbsp sugar
2 1/2 Tbsp flour (Passover version: substitue with 3/4 Tbsp Matzos flour and the rest potatoes flour or corn flour)
Directions:
1. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a Bain-Marie or in the microwave. Stir well until a uniform mixture is formed.
2. Add in the 2 eggs and the pinch of salt and whisk well until incorporated.
3. Add in the egg yolks and whisk well until inpcorporated.
4. Add in the sugar and stir well, so that in the next step, when adding the flour in, only a minimal stir will be needed.
5. Add the flour and stir only until incorporated.
6. Pour into greased ramekins or muffins pan, and bake in an oven preheated to 356F (180 C). As mentioned in the final paragraph of the post, keep a close eye on your fondants and take them out when their margins have firmed but the center hasn’t yet.

Make a Cake

Or at least the best I can remember ever tasting. A few weeks ago Nir, a good friend of Avi’s from work, invited us over to watch the finals of the “Big Brother” show, the Israeli version.
I obviously felt a need to bring cake, so what if Nir’s house is 10 minutes away from ours
But since we’ve only talked about meeting a few hours before the show, I didn’t have much time on my hands.
Exactly on time I remembered seeing this cake on Fanny’s wonderful blog, and drooling on it several times. I made the cake in a large loaf pan, and I also kept enough batter for 2 muffin sized cakes, so I’d be able to taste the cake before bringing it for people to eat in the evening.
The instant my lips touched the warm and soft cake, I fell in in love! A chocolate cake that looks quite innocent and ordinary on the outside, completely takes you by suprise when you get to taste it. So rich and fudgy on the inside, with an intense chocolate flavor and a very pleasant sweetness.
I’ve probably told you by now that Avi says that I use the description “the best ______ I’ve ever tasted” much too often, but when I told him that this was the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had, he looked at me for a second and simply said “yes”.In the original recipe there is also a chocolate syrup that you’re supposed to pour on top of the cake after taking it out of the oven.
I’ve made it but ended up not using it, since in my opinion it makes the cake overwhelmingly sweet.
Since then I’ve already made the cake again, and brought it to a Hannukah social gathering that our friends Daniel and Dana organized last week, and there too it was a huge hit.
Some notes and tips about the cake:
* In the original recipe Fanny says that you can make the cake by mixing all the ingredients with a wooden spoon. The first time I made it I tried to use a wooden spoon but couldn’t get all the many ingredients incorporated, and the butter, that is soft but not melted, didn’t make it any easier. So in this recipe I really recommend using a mixer, unless your hands feel strong enough for a vigorous mixing.
* Something we’ve learnt in the pastry course – Cakes baked in loaf pans tend to crack on top. The place of the crack can be controlled, so it will be nice and symmetrical. The way to do it is by passing a knife or a thin spatula in the middle of the cake (lengthwise), which will determine that the crack will be in the middle.
* If you, like me, often forget to take the butter out of the refrigerator in advance for cakes that require soft butter, you can cut the cold butter into cubes and place them in the microwave for 10 seconds. If it isn’t soft yet, place it for another 10 seconds, and so forth until the butter is soft, but note that it’s only supposed to be soft to touch, but not melted.

How to Make Bread

Growing sourdough at home requires patience. Sourdough is, in fact, natural yeast, that replace all or almost all the yeast in recipes. It also enriches the products you make from it with a slightly sour taste, which cannot evolve in simple breads you make using regular yeast with no starter dough or lengthy making processes.
Someone who enjoys instant pleasures and loves succeeding without putting in too much effort, finds it hard to get around the idea of a long process that brings fruit only on its end, and God forbid, even carries with it a few failures along the way.
But like a few other qualities, my Grandpa, growing up, and life itself have taught me to overcome those urges, to wait.
The initial sourdough growing takes a few days, during which it usually needs to be fed once a day. After it’s ready it will also require some once a week TLC in the form of water and flour.
Ok, I guess it pays up most of the time.. As a formerly impulsive person, patience was a quality that was hard for me to acquire.
It took me 2 failed attempts and a successful third one to get my sourdough right. As soon as it started spreading that wonderful yeasty scent, I began looking for good sourdough bread recipes.
I’ve tried 2 so far, both of them by Eric Kayser, a very talented French pastry chef. The first recipe I tried was of baguettes, which turned out tasty but I wasn’t that pleased with the texture. The second recipe I tried produced the most wonderful ciabatta breads!
I tweaked with the recipe a bit – using whole wheat flour and bread flour mixed together, and I also let it rise for much longer than specified in the recipe, simply because of circumstance.
The ciabattas turned out having a wonderful stiff crust, big holes, which I adore seeing in breads, and a marvelous and balanced taste. Patience is required when making this recipe, it needs to rise 4 different times, but it is definitely worth your while.
Cibatta au levain liquide / Adapted from Eric Kayser
Makes 4 ciabatta breads
Ingredients:
375 gr bread flour
130 gr whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
150 gr levain liquide
350 ml water, warm
2 tsp salt
Directions:
1. Place both types of flour and the dry yeast in a bowl and mix them together.
2. Add in the rest of the ingredients except for the salt. Start kneading.
3. When the mixture starts forming into a dough, add the salt. Knead for 10-12 minutes.
4. Let rise at room temperature until double in volume. With my sourdough it took about 6 hours.
5. Fold the dough to get some of the air out of it, and let rise again until double in volume (again, about 6 hours).
6. Move the dough to a working surface, be careful and try to avoid getting any air out of it at this point. Divide the dough into 4 equally sized parts. Let rise an hour at room temperature.
7. Gently shape each part into a ciabatta, by gently pulling the dough from each side. Don’t worry if the shape isn’t perfect, the most important thing is to keep as much air as you can inside the dough. Let rise for 45 minutes at room temperature. Meanwhile preheat oven to 500F (260C). If you have a baking stone, place it in the lower third of the oven before preheating it.
8. If you want to produce a harder crust, sprinkle some water into the oven before putting the breads in it, which will create a moist environment. Bake the breads for about 10-12 minutes, or until knocking with your finger on one of them produces a hollow sound.
9. Let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Baklava Recipe Ingredients

A yummy, rich and layered pastry, filled with chopped nuts and honey or sugar syrup drizzled over. That is a rough description of Baklava, a popular dessert of Middle Eastern and Greek cuisines. There are no words that can truly describe the mouth-watering and sumptuous eating experience that baklava offers. No wonder it has numerous claims, as to its actual place of origin. The exotic and different ingredients of baklava add to its full-bodied taste, and it has a slightly lengthy preparation method, but the end result is worth it. Here, we look at a simple how to make baklava method, a variation on the authentic recipe, and a cheesecake version. Take your pick.
Easy to Make Baklava Recipe
Ingredients

1 pound chopped mixed nuts (pistachios, walnuts)
1 (16 ounce) packet of phyllo or filo pastry
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup melted butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup water
½ cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish.
Mix cinnamon and nuts. Cut filo pastry stack in half, to fit in dish and cover it to keep from drying.
In baking dish, place 2 sheets of filo, brush generously with butter. Sprinkle 2 to 3 tablespoons of nut mixture on top.
Repeat layers, until nut mixture is over, 6 sheets of filo will be used. Cut baklava (all the way through to the bottom of the dish) into 4 long, diagonal rows, then 9 times diagonally, to make 36 diamond shapes.
Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes, until crisp and golden.
At medium heat, mix sugar and water in a pan, and bring to a boil. Add honey, vanilla and lemon zest, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove baklava from oven, let layers cool, then spoon the syrup over it. When cooled completely, serve.
How to Make Baklava with Chocolate Filling
Ingredients

1 cup hazelnut chocolate spread
1 (3 inch) cinnamon stick
½ cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped
½ cup roasted pistachios, chopped
⅓ cup blanched, toasted almonds, chopped
⅓ cup toasted walnuts, chopped
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ cup water
¾ cup honey
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup butter, melted
24 (14x9 inch) sheets filo dough
Directions:
Mix honey, water and the cinnamon stick in a saucepan, over low heat. Stir till honey dissolves. Increase heat to medium and cook, without stirring, for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and discard cinnamon stick.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt hazelnut chocolate spread. Mix hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, cinnamon and salt together. Butter baking dish lightly.
Place 1 filo sheet lengthwise at baking dish bottom. Brush with butter. Do the same with 5 more filo sheets. Drizzle about ⅓ cup of chocolate spread over filo. Sprinkle ⅓ of nut mixture evenly over spread.
Place 5 sheets over this filled sheet and repeat butter, spread and nut procedure. Press gently into pan.
Cut filo sheets into 24 portions, with 3 lengthwise cuts and 5 diagonal cuts. Bake for 35 minutes, until filo is golden. Remove and cool baklava. Drizzle honey water mixture over it. Cool completely and serve.

Mexican Delicious Dessert

Mexican dessert recipes are lifelong traditions from Spanish and South American countries. These recipes have been passed down from generations, with minor variations made over the years.
Even though they have somewhat evolved over time, they still have the traditional flavors preserved. If you're looking for some traditional, old-fashioned easy Mexican dessert recipes, you've come to the right place.
Orange Buñuelos
In a large pan, boil orange juice, milk, 5 tbs. olive oil, orange peel, and salt. With the help of a wooden spoon, stir in the flour till the dough becomes solid. One by one add all 4 eggs and stir continuously.
Buñuelos are deep fried fritters that originated from Spain. It's one of the popular Mexican dessert recipes that is enjoyed at snack time.

Ingredients
½ cup orange juice (you can also substitute it with lemon)
1 tablespoon grated orange peel (or lemon peel)
½ cup of whole milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
vegetable oil for deep frying
4 eggs
powdered sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
Pour olive oil in a skillet and heat it to 375º F. Make 1 inch pieces of the dough and carefully fry them in the hot oil. Take them out once they are golden brown and drain extra oil on paper towels. Sprinkle some powdered sugar on top and serve them hot.
Apple Cinnamon Empanadas
Ingredients
Empanadas are traditional Mexican desserts from Spanish origin, which consists of bread and stuffings of different fruits. One of the popular Mexican dessert recipes, empanadas can be prepared with chicken, beef, eggs, and vegetables as well. This is one of my favorite Mexican dessert recipes; hope you like it.
Ready to cook pie dough
3 large lightly beaten eggs
1 Can of apple fillings (your choice of brand)
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
2 tablespoons of sugar
Salt to taste
Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in an electric mixer bowl on low speed. Add butter and keep mixing till it turns rough. Without stopping the mixer, add 2 beaten eggs and let the mixture combine properly. Stop the mixer and take the dough out on the kitchen counter top. Put some flour on counter top before placing the dough.

Cut the dough in round circles and fill the apples in it. Put another circle on the top and press the edges together with the help of a fork. Now take the beaten eggs and brush the empanadas. Sprinkle the tops with cinnamon and sugar. Take a greased cookie sheet and place the empanadas on it.
Divide it in half and knead each halves into round balls. Put it in plastic wraps and keep the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Now preheat the oven to 400° F. Open the can of apple filling and put it in a bowl. Add ¼ tablespoon of cinnamon to the filling. Bring the dough out and roll it on the floured surface.
Make couple of holes with the fork to let them cook properly. Bake the empanadas for 30 minutes or till they become golden brown.

Germany Delicious Dessert

Germany is known for its wide range of delicious desserts, which are simply irresistible! The German desserts include a wide variety of cakes and tarts, which are usually made with fresh fruits like apples, plums, strawberries, and cherries. Some of the most popular German desserts remain to be the cheesecake, the famous Black forest cake, the filled doughnuts, the German pancakes known as Eierkuchen and the Rote Grutze pudding. Well you can try these authentic German dessert recipes at home now!

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte - German Black Forest Cake
The Black forest cake known as Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte is a southern German dessert. Typically, it consists of several layers of chocolate cake separated with layers of whipped cream and cherries. Kirschwasser is a clear, colorless fruit brandy, which is used as an ingredient in this cake. The cake is decorated with additional whipped cream, maraschino cherries, and chocolate shavings.
Ingredients
All-purpose flour – 2 cups
White sugar – 2½ cup
Unsweetened cocoa powder – 1 cup
Baking soda – 1½ teaspoon
Salt – 1 teaspoon
Milk – 1½ cup
Shortening – ½ cup
Eggs – 2
Vanilla extract – 1 teaspoon
Kirschwasser – ½ cup
Pinch of salt
Pitted cherries – 1 can
Whipped cream – 2 cups
Semisweet chocolate
Preparation:
First of all, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cover the base of two 8 inch round pans with parchment paper circles.
Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and 1-teaspoon salt. Set the mixture aside.
Now beat the shortening and sugar until the mixture gets light and fluffy.
Add eggs, vanilla extract and beat well and stir in the milk to form a paste.
Pour the mixture into the baking pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.
Allow the cake to cool down completely and remove the paper from underneath the cakes.
Cut each layer in half, horizontally, making 4 layers of the cake.
Sprinkle all the layers of the cake with Kirschwasser.
Now whip the cream and blend in the vanilla, sugar, salt and Kirschwasser.
Spread the whipped cream and cherry filling on ever layer of the cake.
Now, frost the top and sides of the cake.
Sprinkle with chocolate curls and serve chilled.
Rote Grutze
A popular dessert in northern Germany is Rote Grütze which is a red fruit pudding, usually made with black and red currants, raspberries and strawberries or cherries. It is traditionally served with cream, but also common with vanilla sauce or whipped cream.
Ingredients
Black currants – 1 lbs
Raspberries – 1½ lbs
Sugar – 1 cup
Water – 1 quart
Cornstarch – ½ cup
Rum – 1 cup
Preparation
Wash the currents and berries and pick out the stems.
Combine the fruit with water and sugar in a saucepan.
Bring the mixture to a boil and cook the fruit over medium heat until done.
Do not overcook the mixture; the fruits should retain the shape.
Stir in the cornstarch into some water and dissolve it into the juice.
Bring the mixture to boil, cook until thickened, and then remove from heat.
Blend in the rum in this mixture now.
Set the pudding and serve chilled with cold milk or cream.