Caramel Sauce

Alright! So this week my day was a little more invested in cooking than baking, but I ended up cooking some pretty delicious stuff! A mini-thanksgiving for Theo, Yukie and myself. I had homemade Indian food for Thanksgiving, so I got to satisfy my stuffing and brussel sprout craving tonight!

Chicken, stuffing, brussel sprouts, spinach and crescent rolls

But before I made all of that, I decided I’d give making caramel sauce a try. Which I ended up putting into fudge and I tried making walnut caramel clusters. So I went a little crazy with it cause I was SO excited to have successfully made caramel.

Anyway, I used a super easy recipe that I found on Sally’s Baking Addiction. It doesn’t require a candy thermometer, and it’s super easy if you read the instructions first! Her break down of the recipe can be found here, and I won’t repost it because her photos are really the key to success with this, and it’s just so easy!

After making a jar of that, I made some chocolate fudge and put the caramel ontop. And put some walnuts in, cause why not? That shit is DELICIOUS. Here’s the fudge recipe I found here:

Ingredients

• 1 ounce Baker’s unsweetened baking chocolate
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• One 12 ounce bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
• One 14 ounce can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1. Line an 8″ x 8″ pan with wax paper and set aside.
2. Melt butter and the baking chocolate square in a double boiler over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
3. Pour in half the bag of chocolate chips and stir with a heatproof rubber spatula to help melt. Once partially melted add the rest of the bag of chocolate chips and stir until fully melted.
4. Carefully stir in the condensed milk to combine and remove from the heat. Stir in the vanilla.
5. Pour the chocolate mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the top with the spatula.
6. Refrigerate until the fudge is set then cut into bite size pieces. Best eaten straight from the fridge.

Notes

Variation: Add ½ cup chopped walnuts right before pouring chocolate mixture into the pan.

For the walnut clusters, I ended up putting the walnuts onto a piece of parchment paper, layering caramel ontop, and putting melted Dove milk chocolate ontop of that. It was messy, and the caramel was a little softer than I was hoping for after being the fridge for a few hours, but they were delicious.

I hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving!

Dove Chocolate Cheesecake (and fruit) Trifles

So, this morning I was craving dove chocolates – occasionally this will happen to me and I immediately go buy the yummy squares with inspirational messages. But today I decided to try and make something a little more creative with them. I looked on the Dove website and it had a list of recipes people had made with their chocolates. So I set my sights on the cheesecake trifles and IT WAS SUCH A GOOD CHOICE.

As a ritual, my person (Yukie) and I have dinner every Sunday. Theo (boyfriend) and Sergio will join us from time to time, and tonight they decided to. So I had all the pieces of the trifle in the fridge from the afternoon, and put them together after making dinner.

Left to right: Yukie, Sergio, me and Theodore

So, here’s the recipe! I highly recommend it! It was so so so delicious. But also really rich.

Ingredients:

• 4 oz.(s) DOVE^® Chocolate pieces, (16 pieces unwrapped)
• 3 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1 cup fresh raspberries (I did some strawberries too!)
• 8 oreos (or other chocolate sandwich cookies)
• More pieces of DOVE chocolate for garnish (if you want, I left these out)

How to:

1. Melt the chocolate (either in a microwave safe container or on the stove) and let it cool slightly

2. Mix together cream cheese and sugar until well blended. Add the cooled chocolate and mix in.

3. Whip cream until stiff peaks form. Add half of this to the chocolate/cream cheese mixture

4. Coarsely chop up the sandwich cookies

Assembly:

-Put a thin layer of cookie bits on the bottom of the mason jar/glass

-Add a layer of the chocolate/cream cheese mixture

-Add a dollop of whipped cream and a few berries

-Repeat first three layers ontop. Feel free to add garnish chocolates if desired.

I didn’t take any photos of these, because they weren’t very pretty and they also went fast – they were so delicious! They’re super rich though, so if you’ve got a sensitive tummy (like I do) I recommend just doing one set of layers.

This is a pretty easy recipe and it was my first trifle. I definitely plan on making it again soon 🙂

*****Bonus addition:***** I also made hot chocolate today! And according to Theo, it was the best hot chocolate he’s ever had, so I’ll note the *incredibly easy* recipe below:

2 cups of Almond Milk (unsweetened, vanilla)

3 ounces (12 pieces) of Dove milk chocolate

1. In a sauce pan, heat 1 cup of almond milk and melt in the chocolate

2. Once the chocolate has smoothly melted in, add the other cup of (almond) milk and let it heat through. Stir together and serve!

I added a few pieces of Andes’ mint chocolates for flavor, and garnished it with whipped cream from the trifles and a few more pieces of andes’ mints. It was delicious.

Everything I’ve read says you should just make it to your taste – add more or less chocolate and sugar if it’s not sweet enough.

Enjoy!