kurkubini

One of the amazing benefits of loving baking and cooking is that when you crave a specific ingredient you can find so many alternatives ways of using it to create the perfect treat!

Almonds, coconut flakes and chocolate are always in my cupboard. Last night I was craving for something small chocolatey and coconutey. I looked on the web for recipes with these ingredients and the result was a plethora of cookie and cake recipes. I wasn’t satisfied as I wanted something more moist and preferably not baked. As I was continuing my search in both English and Greek I came across a few recipes of what we call in Greece Αμυγδαλωτά treats similar to marzipan. Building upon the basic recipe for Αμυγδαλωτά I decided to add coconut, orange curd and chocolate and make my own version of marzipan chocolates. As expected I loved them but yes I wasn’t the only one. A friend that visited me last night loved them too and ate 3-4 of them 🙂

Ingredients:

1 cup ground almonds

1 cup coconut flakes

3 tbsp orange juice

2 tbsp water

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup orange curd

200 g dark chocolate to coat

In a bowl we mix the dry ingredients with the vanilla essence and the orange juice. The aim is to get a sticky dough we can work. If needed we add more water. We form small balls and put them in the fridge for half an hour. Once out of the fridge we dip them one by one in the orange curd and put them in the fridge. We melt the dark chocolate in Bain-marie and set it aside to cool for 10 minutes. On our kitchen counter or table we place kitchen foil and on top of it we arrange the balls. With a spoon we pour chocolate on each ball and then if we want decorate with crystallized decorating sugar or coconut flakes.

We place our marzipan chocolates in the fridge and cool for 1 – 2 hours.