Valentine's Day Treat: Chocolate Covered Strawberries

With Valentine's day just around the corner, I thought I would give you guys a final idea for something to make for your friends and loved ones. These aren't exactly the most original thing in the world, but I absolutely LOVE chocolate covered strawberries. It is easy to make, doesn't take too much time and it tastes so delicious. You could wrap it in a cute box and it would make the perfect little gift for your special someone, your girlfriends, your parents or anyone you feel deserve a little something extra. As I said, this is so easy to make, and the idea isn't exactly new so you've maybe even made this before, but I love this idea so I though I would show you how I make them :)

This is all you need. Pretty obvious really; some chocolate and strawberries. I used two chocolate plates like this for the strawberries on this plate.

To melt the chocolate, I boil some water and place a bowl with the chocolate on top of a colander that came with the boiler. You don't need to have this at all, you could just place the bowl of chocolate directly in the hot water, but be careful so the water doesn't get into the chocolate. And one more thing, be careful so your chocolate doesn't get too hot. When chocolate reaches a certain temperature, the structure in it will start to denature and instead of getting soft melted chocolate you will end up with a hard, clumpy consistency (trust me, I've been there and it's not fun). So be sure to stir the chocolate quite frequently and maybe take it out of the water for a little while if you think it is getting to hot. I know that all you americans out there have some chocolate that it meant for melting and that you can just put in the microwave, so if you have access to that, go for it! ;)

Now time for the fun part. When all the chocolate is melted you can start dipping the strawberries. This is where you can get really fancy if you wanted to, with different colored chocolate, sprinkles or other fun decorations. I had some small heart shaped decorations, but I didn't like how it looked so I decided to leave them out. They still taste delicious either way :)

But all your covered strawberries on a plate or baking sheet or something like that (preferably something non-sticky) and but it in the fridge for about an hour or to keep there until you need them. 

And voilà! There you have it, your own home made chocolate covered strawberries. I feel kind of silly putting this up, but I made them, and I love them, and they're delicious, so I thought I would show you anyway! 

Do you like chocolate covered strawberries? Have you ever made them yourself? And what other treats do you like to make when you want something a little extra?

Nutella rolls (& some cinnamon rolls as well)

It's been snowing here for the last couple of days pretty much without stop, so today I decided to try out my baking skills. Cinnamon rolls are something that I bake quite often as far as baking goes, so today I wanted to try out something a little bit different. I absolutely love Nutella, and I love rolls as well, so I figured I would try to combine the two and make Nutella rolls. They actually turned out really well, so I though I would share my recipe and some pictures with you. 

  

The things you will need are:

1 kg all-purpose flour 

1,5 packets of yeast (approx. 18 g dried/50 g fresh)

200-300 g sugar

200 g butter

5 dl milk

1 tsp cardamom 

The first thing you do is melt butter and add milk. Then you add the yeast (crumble it into the mixture if you're using fresh yeast). Add all the dry ingredients, and mix until everything is combined.

Then you have to let the dough rise for about an hour or until it has doubled in size and looks something like this.

Put your dough on your baking surface and roll it out to a big, flat rectangle. How thin you want it is a lot up to you, but I like to make it quite thin so I can put more cinnamon and sugar, or in this case Nutella on it :)

The next step is to add your content. As you can see I decided to go with half Nutella and half cinnamon, sugar and butter. For the Nutella side all you have to do is spread the Nutella out on your dough. For the cinnamon side I first spread out some butter with a knife and then added sugar and cinnamon on top. (There should more cinnamon on the dough than shown in this picture!)

When you're happy with the content, you start rolling the dough as shown to the left over, and when you're done it should look something like the picture on the right. Cut across the roll in about finger-thick slices. 

Spread your slices on a baking sheet and then it is time to let them rise again. To speed up the rising process you can place the sheets in a warm place, for example close to a heater or over a sink filled  with hot water.

When your happy with the size of the rolls (after around another hour if you have time), you put them in the oven at 225*C (435F) for about 8-10 mins. 

And that's it! Both of the versions turned out really good, if I shall say so myself. Haha. But they're actually pretty good, so if you're in the mood for some comfort food on a cold winter night you should definitely try these out :)

Do you like to bake or make food? What's your favorite thing to make?