Did Someone Say Chocolate Sauce? - Bosnia and Herzegovina
Once again I find myself slightly behind in blogging. This seems to be a common theme for me. I think I sometimes live too closely by the quote "Procrastinators unite . . . tomorrow!" Either that, or I'm a complete hedonist and let other things distract me from the important ones like pancake blogging. Either way, I'm attempting to catch up again. The good news is that there were a couple of weeks where we didn't make pancakes because of a half marathon run/bike ride race and company in from out of town; which means I only have about 3 countries to catch up on. Yay!
So off we go to Eastern Europe once again as we visit Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnians like to eat crepes. They call them palacinke (pronounced pah-lah-cheen-kah). While finding a crepe recipe isn't too hard, finding one that is a Bosnian crepe recipe was a bit challenging. Alas, we prevailed in our search for a Bosnian palacinke recipe. We also discovered that Bosnians like to put chocolate sauce, jelly/jam, fresh fruit, or chopped nuts in their palacinke. Since we were definitely opting for the chocolate sauce, we decided to use fresh fruit. We thought a nice combination would be a tart apple, so that's what we chose. Here we go with the ingredients for palacinke.
To make the palacinke you will need:
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
I started by making the chocolate sauce. Gather all of the ingredients you will need to make the chocolate sauce.
Mix everything except the chopped chocolate in a pot, and heat it on low heat until the sugars and cocoa are all melted.
Obviously everything hasn't melted yet in the above picture. Make sure to use your whisk and continuously whisk the mixture as it melts. After it all melts, get your chopped chocolate.
Mix the chopped chocolate into the sugar/cocoa mixture. While doing this completely remove the mixture from the heat. It should be hot enough to melt the chocolate without having to keep it on the burner. If you keep it on the burner, you could end up burning the chocolate instead of just melting it into the mixture. Blech! After all of the chocolate has melted, remove it from the pot, and allow it to cool.
It will make much more than what you see above, but I separated out what I thought we would use for the actual palacinke from the rest. I wanted it to cool more quickly so that it would thicken up. After it has cooled, you can store the excess chocolate sauce in a jar in the refrigerator and use it however you would normally use your chocolate sauce.
Now that we've made the chocolate sauce, it's time to make the palacinke. Place the eggs in a bowl and lightly beat them.
I think we should probably do a show displaying all of the different egg pictures we have like this. It seems like every time there is a pancake recipe that requires eggs, we take a photo like this. Make sure both eggs are in the bowl before you beat them.
After you lightly beat the eggs, put all of the ingredients into a medium sized bowl and beat until smooth. Unfortunately we didn't take a picture of the batter like we usually do, so all you get to see are photos of the ingredients.
Remember, crepes are a thin batter, so this batter should be pretty runny. If it's not, add a little bit more milk or water.
Let the batter rest for 20-30 minutes. Once it has rested, it's time to get out your crepe pan and begin making the palacinke. Heat the crepe pan up and place a small amount of oil on it. As always, we used olive oil, but use whatever you have on hand. Then pour 1/4 cup of the batter into the middle of the pan and swirl the pan until the batter completely covers the bottom.
Let the palacinke cook until it looks completely dry (about 3-4 minutes).
After it looks dry, flip it and cook it briefly on the other side for another minute. Continue cooking until all of the batter has been used up. We got about 8 palacinke from this recipe.
Now we're ready to stuff the palacinke. First slice your apple. We used an apple slicer/corer to cut large slices.
After cutting the large slices, we used a paring knife to slice them even thinner. Of course, the dog smelled the apples and had to come and get his share.
After slicing the apples, we placed them in a corner of the corner of a palacinke and drizzled chocolate sauce over the top. We then folded the palacinke into quarters and drizzled more chocolate sauce on top. Here is the finished product:
While these tasted good, I'm not sure we'd use apples again as the fresh fruit filler. They provided a nice textural contrast, but they were a bit too tart for the chocolate sauce. We would probably use strawberries in any future palacinke recipe. If you try out this recipe and decide to use apples, you probably want to use a milk chocolate instead of dark or bittersweet to make the chocolate sauce.
Join us soon as we head to Botswana for our next stop!
So off we go to Eastern Europe once again as we visit Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnians like to eat crepes. They call them palacinke (pronounced pah-lah-cheen-kah). While finding a crepe recipe isn't too hard, finding one that is a Bosnian crepe recipe was a bit challenging. Alas, we prevailed in our search for a Bosnian palacinke recipe. We also discovered that Bosnians like to put chocolate sauce, jelly/jam, fresh fruit, or chopped nuts in their palacinke. Since we were definitely opting for the chocolate sauce, we decided to use fresh fruit. We thought a nice combination would be a tart apple, so that's what we chose. Here we go with the ingredients for palacinke.
To make the palacinke you will need:
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups of milk
- 2 teaspoons oil
- 2 cups of flour
- 1/2 cup water
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
I started by making the chocolate sauce. Gather all of the ingredients you will need to make the chocolate sauce.
Mix everything except the chopped chocolate in a pot, and heat it on low heat until the sugars and cocoa are all melted.
Obviously everything hasn't melted yet in the above picture. Make sure to use your whisk and continuously whisk the mixture as it melts. After it all melts, get your chopped chocolate.
Mix the chopped chocolate into the sugar/cocoa mixture. While doing this completely remove the mixture from the heat. It should be hot enough to melt the chocolate without having to keep it on the burner. If you keep it on the burner, you could end up burning the chocolate instead of just melting it into the mixture. Blech! After all of the chocolate has melted, remove it from the pot, and allow it to cool.
It will make much more than what you see above, but I separated out what I thought we would use for the actual palacinke from the rest. I wanted it to cool more quickly so that it would thicken up. After it has cooled, you can store the excess chocolate sauce in a jar in the refrigerator and use it however you would normally use your chocolate sauce.
Now that we've made the chocolate sauce, it's time to make the palacinke. Place the eggs in a bowl and lightly beat them.
I think we should probably do a show displaying all of the different egg pictures we have like this. It seems like every time there is a pancake recipe that requires eggs, we take a photo like this. Make sure both eggs are in the bowl before you beat them.
After you lightly beat the eggs, put all of the ingredients into a medium sized bowl and beat until smooth. Unfortunately we didn't take a picture of the batter like we usually do, so all you get to see are photos of the ingredients.
Remember, crepes are a thin batter, so this batter should be pretty runny. If it's not, add a little bit more milk or water.
Let the batter rest for 20-30 minutes. Once it has rested, it's time to get out your crepe pan and begin making the palacinke. Heat the crepe pan up and place a small amount of oil on it. As always, we used olive oil, but use whatever you have on hand. Then pour 1/4 cup of the batter into the middle of the pan and swirl the pan until the batter completely covers the bottom.
Let the palacinke cook until it looks completely dry (about 3-4 minutes).
After it looks dry, flip it and cook it briefly on the other side for another minute. Continue cooking until all of the batter has been used up. We got about 8 palacinke from this recipe.
Now we're ready to stuff the palacinke. First slice your apple. We used an apple slicer/corer to cut large slices.
After cutting the large slices, we used a paring knife to slice them even thinner. Of course, the dog smelled the apples and had to come and get his share.
After slicing the apples, we placed them in a corner of the corner of a palacinke and drizzled chocolate sauce over the top. We then folded the palacinke into quarters and drizzled more chocolate sauce on top. Here is the finished product:
While these tasted good, I'm not sure we'd use apples again as the fresh fruit filler. They provided a nice textural contrast, but they were a bit too tart for the chocolate sauce. We would probably use strawberries in any future palacinke recipe. If you try out this recipe and decide to use apples, you probably want to use a milk chocolate instead of dark or bittersweet to make the chocolate sauce.
Join us soon as we head to Botswana for our next stop!
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