Tag: Italian dessert

The Chocolate Mousse: the tasty calling for Christmas

To help you celebrate Christmas but all Italian style, today we go deeper and deeper in the Italian Christmas tradition and we discovered this tremendous recipe, perusing the web. This triple joyful Chocolate Mousse will bring fun and calories to all of you as all the other spoon desserts that we have already presented to you. We will need the following ingredients:

INGREDIENTS

for the white Chocolate Mousse

  • 1 lb double cream
  • 11 oz white chocolate
  • ½ oz gelatin sheet

for the milk Chocolate Mousse

  • 1 lb Double cream
  • ½ lb milk chocolate
  • ½ oz gelatin sheet

for the dark Chocolate Mousse

  • 1 ½ lb double cream
  • 1 lb dark chocolate
  • ½ oz gelatin sheet

To garnish remember to have close 10 oz. of dark chocolate to spread over

PREPARATION

for the White Chocolate Mousse:

  • Soften the gelatin sheets in the hot water for a minute or two.
  • Melt the chocolate in a bain marie and after add the gelatin to the chocolate. In the meanwhile, bring ¾ cup of cream to a boil, then  remove it quickly from the stoves.
  • Stir in the chocolate together with the gelatin mixture, which you have kept at a temperature.
  • With a whisk, beat the remaining ¾ cup cream. Cool the chocolate mixture, then add the whipped cream. If the chocolate is still too hot, wait, otherwise the whipped cream will melt.
  • Put the mouse in a mold and let cool in the refrigerator for an hour and a half.

For the Milk Chocolate Mousse follow the same procedure.When finished, pour the second mousse into the mold containing the previous mousse. Put all into the fridge for and hour and a half and let the second mousse set.

Prepare the third mousse, meaning the Dark Chocolate Mousse, in the same way and at the very end pour the dark chocolate mousse into the mold containing the other two mousses. Return to the fridge and let everything set for three hours. Before serving, melt ¾ cups of dark chocolate in a bain marie and pour it over the mousse layers.

Struffoli: the true essence of Naples’ Christmas

STRUFFOLI NAPLES RECIPEStruffoli are an incredible dessert coming from the essence of Naples. Those tiny honey balls are in fact tiny fried pieces of dough. The recipe is ancient and simple: you can make it simply mixing up flour, sugar, eggs, lemon and rum.

After, once you fried the dough and having obtained a lot of little balls, they will be coated with honey and coloured “confettini”. The size of the pieces here matters: the more they are small, the more they can absorb all the honey you will sprinkle on them. Prepared for the occasion of Christmas in all Campania region, the Stuffoli are an easy recipe and a monumental piece of tradition to taste during Noel!

INGREDIENTS (servings for 10 people):

  • 300 g of flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon of Sugar
  • 1 lemon
  • 2 tablespoon of rum or anisette
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 25 g of butter
  • 4 – 5 tablespoons of honey
  • Some coloured confettini
  • Extra virgin olive oil (to fry)

PREPARATION

  1. Put the flour on a table or over a wooden piece and pit an hole;  in the middle of it add the sugar, the butter, the eggs, the rum, the salt and the grated peel of the lemon.
  2. Knead to obtain a nice, smooth and solid dough. Let it stand for ca. 30 minutes.
  3. Knead again the dough and cut it in small pieces. Knead each part again, this time try to roll it until you have 10 loafs thin and long.
  4. Cut the loafs into small squared pieces (struffoli).
  5. Preheat the extra virgin olive oil in a pan and fry in it the struffoli ca. 5 minutes, until they become golden.
  6. Drain them on a kitchen paper, put an overturned glass in the middle of a dish and place the struffoli around it.
  7. In a pan melt the honey and then pour it all over the struffoli. Let the little mountain rest,  remove the glass and sprinkle with colored confections.

TOTAL COOKING TIME: 1 hour and 10 mins.

Panna cotta with strawberries: when you reach perfection in Italian dessert

Lovely couple, the panna cotta and the strawberries! The ingredients has to be fresh and there are fit for all the tastes and desire. Of course in summetime this is a delicious nibble, pudding or dessert! What do you need? Simply, the best! Here we go with the list! for the panna cotta you will need:

  • 1 1/2 cups milk;
  • 1 (.25 ounce) envelope unflavored gelatin;
  • 1 1/2 cups whipping cream;
  • 1/4 cup white sugar;
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.

For the dressing those are the ingredients:

  • 1 quart fresh strawberries, quartered,
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract,
  • 1/4 cup sugar,
  • 1/4 cup water.

Now, put the milk into a bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over the milk. The mixture has to sit until the gelatin softens. I takes about 5 minutes.
Mix the cream and 1/4 cup sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.

Stir in the gelatin mixture; cook and stir until the gelatin will dissolve completely. It takes about 3 minutes. Add then the vanilla extract and pour the mixture in abowl, cover and let chill for 4 hours.

Instead, in order to make the strawberry sauce, put together the strawberries with two teaspoons vanilla extract, 1/4 cup sugar and water. Heat the mixture in a saucepan, and in the while you can crush the strawberries, Simmer the sauce until the sugar has absorbed and the sauce has thickened. It takes about 10 minutes; then let it cool.
Remove chilled panna cotta from the refrigerator  before serving, dipping the bottoms of the cups in which you have put it in warm water. This will help loosen the custard. The dessert is almost ready to be put  onto a dessert plate, in order to unmold. With a spoon sprinkle lovely and juicy strawberry sauce over your panna cotta and serve.

 

Italian Rice Pie: a delicious use of the rice

TORTA DI RISO-RICE PIEOf all the Easter pies, one of the Italian favourite dessert is  rice pie (torta di riso). Many regional variations for it as usual in Italy for this delicious recipe, but most sweet rice pies are made from eggs, rice (Arborio), ricotta cheese, and citrus (orange or lemon).
The Italian rice pie is like having two pies in one! When it bakes, a bottom layer of dense rice forms while the top is a separate layer of  lemon-laced custard.
Rice pie is served at room temperature at Easter Sunday, but it’s an irresistible pudding for every season. It’s not overly sweet, and it is also considered a lovely “brunch” dish. Here is a long list of the ingredients, divided into the part that is important to make: let’s start from the crust:

  1. 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  2. 1 tablespoon baking powder
  3. 1/4 cup butter
  4. 1/2 cup white sugar
  5. 3 eggs
  6. 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

And now you are ready for the filling and its own ingredients to mix:

  1. 1 cup water
  2. 1/2 cup uncooked white rice
  3. 1 quart milk
  4. 1 (15 ounce) container ricotta cheese
  5. 1 1/2 cups white sugar
  6. 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  7. 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
  8. 6 eggs

The directions? Here it is, simple as ever: stir the flour and baking powder together in a bowl and set aside.

In a second large bowl, cream the butter and half a cup of sugar. Afterwards, beat in 3 eggs, one at a time, and stir in the vanilla.

Then beat in the flour mixture to make the dough and divide it in half  to have the final two balls.

Flour a surface, roll out each ball to fit two 10 inch pie plates.

Line the pie plates with the crust, and refrigerate until needed. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan, and stir in the rice. Stir in the milk and stir until the mixture thickens.

When it is cooled down, preheat oven to 325 degrees F  or 165 degrees C. eat Use the ricotta cheese, and add 1 1/2 cups of sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest.Finally add 6 eggs together in a mixing bowl. Stir in the cooled rice mixture and pour into the pie shells.

Put all in the preheated oven until the filling is set and tops are golden brown. it will take more or less 90 minutes. Remember to serve it at at room temperature!!!

Chocolate salami or Salame di cioccolato

Chocolate salami  (Salame di cioccolato, salame turco or salame vichingo) is a dessert very popular in Italy.  It is a lovely pudding you can also find in trattorias: you wil find it in those rural “trattorias” you can find along the Po river at the border between Lombardy and Emilia Romagna regions of Italy. It’s a really a rustic dessert, and it is a part of the “cucina Povera” made of “poor” ingredients but really yummy and very good and tasty! Here the ingredients:

300 g (11 oz) Rich tea biscuits or Digestive kind of biscuits
150 g (5 oz) Butter (unsalted)
100 g (4 oz) Dark chocolate
100 g (4 oz) Sugar
2 Eggs
30 ml (1 fl oz) Dark rum

How to make it? Cut the butter into pieces and let it warm to room temperature, while breaking the chocolate bar into pieces. Put them into a small bowl and melt the chocolate very slowly. When the chocolate is completely melted, set the bowl aside and let the chocolate cool a little. Put the biscuits into a large bowl and break the biscuits using the back of a spoon, making them into crumbs.

As the butter is soft, work it with a whisk and then start adding the ingredients: first the sugar, then the eggs, the melted chocolate, the rum and  the biscuit crumbs.

The result? A lovely chocolate dough that will turn in the shape of a salami. Put the chocolate salami onto a layer of cling film and then wrap it with the film.

Put the chocolate salami in the fridge for a couple of hours, after the cooling time slice the chocolate salami and serve it with coffee or tea.