BONBONIERE  

Makes: 1 - 4 servings

Time: 70 minutes

Ingredients: cashew nuts, Brazil nuts or hazelnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, white and coloured confectionery decorations from Carla, raspberries, strawberries and bags of chocolate icing from Carla in white, milk, hazelnut and dark varieties.

Procedure:

Prepare the fillings for the sweets: pour out the nuts, seeds and confectionery decorations into the moulds you plan to use – empty sweet tubs (or the bottom of the moulds). In summer you can use smaller strawberries or raspberries. You can put plenty of nuts into the tubs. It does not matter if they peep out of the top of the chocolate a little.

The almonds must be blanched and peeled. Pour boiling water over the almonds in a pan and leave them to stand for about 10 minutes. The skin of the almonds will soften and can be easily skinned with a little finger pressure.

Pour some water into a pan and heat it on the cooker to a temperature, which is warm enough but not yet hot (about 45°C). Heat up the icings and after 10 minutes, check whether the bags are soft and the icing heated through.

Pour the icing into the tubs and mix various types. You can make spirals, dots, crosshatching or a completely random picture. You can also mix dark and light icing together like in the Laguna box of chocolates – “fruits of the sea”. It is helpful to use a skewer to mix them. Interesting shaped sweets can also be created from empty Laguna boxes of chocolates. The tubs are shaped like stars and mussels.

Put the prepared box of chocolates into the fridge for about an hour to set. The finished box of chocolates is also suitable as a present.

Witch’s gingerbread                                                              

Makes: 10 - 12 servings                                     

Time: 4 hours

Ingredients: 160 g sugar, 1 egg, olive oil, jam, cloves, ground cinnamon, cooking cocoa from Carla (or Dutch cocoa), rum, honey or vanilla sugar, lemon, raisins, finely chopped nuts, 0.3 l milk, baking powder for gingerbread and 450 grams of plain flour.

Procedure:

Finely grate the zest of one washed lemon into a bowl. Add the egg, 5 tablespoons of oil, sugar and mix well with a spoon.

Then add a glass of plum or pear jam, 5 crushed or ground cloves, a spoon of cinnamon, 3 spoons of cocoa, a spoon of rum, a spoon of honey, a small pack of raisins, a handful of nuts, flour, baking powder for gingerbread and milk. Mix everything well with a spoon or a mixer. Heat the oven to 180°C.

Before it is hot, grease the baking sheet or tin and dust it with flour. Pour in the dough.

Flatten the dough with a spatula. Bake the gingerbread for about 35 - 40 minutes.

You can go wild with Carla icings on the gingerbread once it has cooled down. Anything goes.

Carla cakes with                   

Makes: 10 - 12 servings                                

Time: 1 hour

Ingredients: 2x 100g plain chocolate Carla coco bars (can also be milk chocolate), 3 cups of semi-coarse flour, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of sugar, 3 eggs, 1 sachet of baking powder, 1 cup of oil, dark, milk, white or hazelnut icing from Carla and ground nuts to decorate

Procedure:

First of all coarsely grate the bars. Grease a baking sheet or tin with high sides and dust it with flour. Preheat the oven.

Add all the other ingredients to the grated Carla bars and mix into a dough, which we then pour into the prepared baking tin. Bake the Carla cakes for about half an hour in a medium-hot oven. Allow the cake to cool when ready.

After the cake has cooled down, coat it with icing, which has been heated in the bag in hot water.

Finally top the Carla cakes with ground nuts and serve, for example, with coffee.

Bon appétit!