Chocolate, Coconut and Nutella

Those three have been on my mind lately and have their way into various recipes.

I've had a strong dessert craving

Here, we have 4 tiny Nutella-coconut empanadas with chocolate drizzle.

I made the smallest batch of pastry dough ever with: a scant 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon sugar
pinch salt
1 tablespoon shortening - yes, Crisco!! OMG I am going to Foodie-Hell. I didn't want to defrost butter from the freezer.
a teaspoon or so of ice water

Then, I mashed together a filling of roughly equal parts Nutella, cream cheese and shredded, sweetened coconut. I rolled out the pastry fairly thinly and out out rounds with a 2-inch biscuit cutter, filed them, moistened the edges with water, folded them over and crimped the edges.

Glaze with an egg wash and then bake in a preheated oven at 400 F for 20 minutes. Let cool a bit and then top with a chocolate glaze drizzled over the top. Easy.

Next up is this bittersweet chocolate-coconut silk - based on the chocolate cream from this recipe for Deadly Chocolate Delice. I will be featuring my take on this recipe later this week. I had leftover chocolate creme, so baked it in a crème brûlée dish.

In. SANE. This is a bit of deep, rich, silky, intensely bittersweet chocolate heaven with a touch of coconut, one of my favorite flavor combinations.

Here is a closer look at the smooth filling.

This is only a 4-ounce dish, but it's more than enough for this dish. This is meant to be eaten slowly and savored, almost contemplated.

If you are not a fan of dark, bittersweet chocolates, this is not for you. Switch to semisweet. :)

Finally, we have this mini chocolate-hazelnut cake with brown sugar caramel filling and Nutella ganache.

The cake is based on this recipe for a chocolate layer cake, but I cut it way down to make 3 mini cakes in 8-ounce ramekins instead of two 10-inch round cakes. The cake is insane: Delicious, moist. rich, everything that a chocolate cake should be.

The Nutella ganache was simplicity. I warmed some chopped dark chocolate with cream in a double boiler until the chocolate melted and then added a good dollop of Nutella, took off the heat and stirred

until eveything was smooth and lovely.

The caramel filling was a nightmare. I have found my culinary bête noire. It is candy and caramel. I ruined the first batch of so-called foolproof salted caramel and the gae up, amid the reek of scorched sugar and made a filling from butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and cream.

The results were fantastic, and the kids enjoyed their cakes.

All in all a pretty successful week.

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