Krembo

Happy Passover/Eastern!

Summer is starting to show (although there barely was any winter this year) and passover has arrived!

Here's a picture of me with my mom munching on all the sweets I found during the easter bunny hunt. (light years ago)

And guess what, this year I was in charge for dessert! yay.

So to celebrate the begining of summer or better said- the ending of winter I decided to make an all-time favorite Israeli winter dessert- Krembo!

Now the thing is that this recipe has nothing to do with egg whites or marshmallow cream, It's more about the idea of a crunchy base, topped with a great tasting filling and covered with chocolate. (a very fancy Krembo I must add)

(full recipe below)

So let's start:

I always start with the base for this one, just because it's easy to store in the fridge and keeps it's fresh crisp up to a week. (plus it needs cooling anyway)

For the base melt the chocolate and Nutella (microwave or in a heat proof bowl over simmering water) until completely melted. Then pour chocolate over the rice puffs ( or puff rice- whateva!), and mix until combined (see  pictures).

Then pile the mixture onto a sheet of parchment and cover it with another one. Use a rolling pin to roll out the mixture to about 1 cm thikness. Leave the paper on it and freeze it (place it on a baking tray so it will stay a straight even surface while freezing) for about 20 minutes until the mixture hardens.

After 20 minutes in the freezer, take the hard mixture out and cut out 4 cm circles with a round cookie cutter or a sharp edged glass/cup. (you could even make miniature ones or really big ones). Keep the cut outs in an airtight container in the fridge until use. You'll get a lot of leftovers so feel free to snack them away while making the rest of this dessert. (I like to eat the broken lefover pieces with the leftover filling...yuuuum...)

On to the filling: (WARNING: this is no quick dessert recipe, this cream needs atleast 4 hours in the fridge, even better overnight.)

In a small saucepan heat up one package (250 ml) of heavy cream and mix in the coffee granules, don't let it come to a boil, when it starts bubbling up take it off the heat and pour it straight over the white chocolate, wait a few seconds and then start stirring until you get a smooth cream. Cover it and let it get completely cold (cool for atleast 4 hours, preferably overnight.)

After the mixture is cool, place it in a bowl of an electric mixer add the second amount of heavy cream (250 ml) and mix on high speed (like you would make whipped cream), it should be pretty stiff (enough to be piped on the base)- but be careful not to over mix it! Especially when using an electric stand mixer- it can turn very quickly into butter. (see pictures: cooled cream, added heavy cream and final cream filling.

Now to piping the mixture, put it all into a large piping bag with a round (1 cm) tip, and just start piping the mixture on to the base in a swirling motion (so you get a nice layered look). After you finished piping place the Krembos in the freezer for two hours. This step is important because the whole Krembo is going to be dipped in melted chocolate and in oder for it to not melt while doing so- it has to freeze!

This is usually the time where I sit back with a few broken and leftover pieces of the base and a pipig bag with leftover cream filling and sink into krembo heaven. ahhh... 

Ok! Come on, stay with me people! One last step to go!

Melt the dark chocolate, only after it melted add about 3 tablespoons of oil (the reason we add oil is that it thins the chocolate and gives our krembo a very thin and crunchy coat, without the oil the layer of chocolate would be very hard and too thick to bite into).

Pour the melted chocolate into any tall glass or bowl so it's easier to dip them completely. You will see that in a few seconds the chocolate will harden on the krembos.

After dipping all of them, put them back into the freezer- And you are done!

Place them outside the fridge a few minutes before serving.

Krembo:

Base:

200 gr bitter sweet chocolate

1\2 cup nutella

6 1\2 cups puffed rice

Cream:

500 ml heavy cream (divided to two times 250 ml)

1 tbsp instant coffee granules

250 gr white chocolate

coating:

350 gr dark chocolate

3 tbsp neutral oil (canola, etc.)

Notes:

*Yup loads of chocolate in this recipe, the reason for that is mainly the dipping part- a large amount of chocolate is needed so we can dip. You could of course use less and maybe try to pour the chocolate over the krembos instead of dipping them, I prefer the original way.

just use the leftover melted chocolate and make some more rice crisp snacks.

*For the people that are not crazy about coffee flavour can just keep it out and even experiment with other flavours.

*I really recommend using dark bitter chocolate for the coating simply because the base and filling are sweeeeet enough.