Amaranth is one of my favourite foods, you can do so much with it, it is delicious and super healthy. I found the recipe for this amaranth souffle at the website of a Californian company called "Rancho Gordo". They produce many great foods and amaranth is one of them.
This souffle is really wonderful and the best thing is that you can twist the recipe with different spices and herbs. I also make a sweet version with sugar, cinnamon and raisins.
Amaranth souffle
recipe from Rancho Gordo 
makes 6 individual souffles
1/2 dl +1 tbsp amaranth
1,5 dl water
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
some ground white pepper and nutmeg
1 dl +2 tbsp warm milk
2 large eggs
50 gr grated cheese (I used Parmesan)
some butter and bread crumbs for the molds
Cook amaranth in double as much water and cook for about 20 minutes. When done it will look like thick porridge. Set aside. Preheat oven to 180C. Butter the molds and sprinkle with the bread crumbs.
Melt butter, add flour, pepper and nutmeg, as soon as it foams (do not let it get brown) take off the heat and add slowly milk, mixing all the time. Cook for couple of minutes until it thickens. Add grated cheese, mix well, add amaranth.
Separate the eggs and add egg yolks to the amaranth mixture. Beat white eggs until foamy, add some lemon juice and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 to the amaranth mixture, fold in rest of the egg whites.
Pour the mixture into the molds, fill 3/4 of each mold. Bake for about 30 minutes, then turn of the oven and leave the souffle inside for about 10 minutes. Serve hot!
I made these cute Valentines hearts with white strawberry chocolate and popped amaranth. The chocolate is made by a German company called Vivani and they make amazing organic chocolate. White chocolate with pieces of strawberries was more than perfect for the Valentines hearts. And almost too cute to eat...almost.
100 gr white chocolate, 5 tbsp popped amaranth....melt the chocolate, mix with amaranth and shape.
Here is another dessert with wafer sheets: sweet salami. I still remember very well when I had this dessert for the first time. I was around 10 years old and a cousin of my neighbour made it. I was amazed how cool it looked, I had never seen cake looking like a sausage but made of chocolate and biscuits.
The original recipe is with butter biscuits, chocolate, milk, butter and sometimes nuts. My recipe has no butter, instead I increased the amount of chocolate. I also added some popped amaranth covered with honey. But you can put any kind of biscuits, nuts (chopped, ground), chocolate....
I used one wafer sheet but you can do this cake without it as well. Form salami, let it set over night in the fridge and next day sprinkle with some powdered sugar.
Sweet salami
1 wafer sheet
200 gr chocolate
1,5 dl milk
3 dl popped amaranth
2 dl ground hazelnuts
300 gr crushed amaranth biscuits
Put wafer sheet between two wet tea towels. It needs to get soft so that you can use it as "skin" for the salami.
Crush biscuits and mix with amaranth and hazelnuts. Chop chocolate, heat milk and pour over chocolate, stir until melted. Pour over biscuits and blend well. Let sit for 15 minutes.
The texture should not be too dry or too wet. You should be able to form salami that can hold its shape. If necessary add more dry or wet ingredients.
Put salami at one end of the wafer sheet (rough side up) and role until salami is covered with the wafer sheet. You can also make 2 or 3 thinner salamis if you want. Wrap salami tightly with cling film and put it in the fridge. From time to time turn salami so that it doesn't get too flat.
I wasn't looking for a chocolate egg mold, but when I saw it at the store where I bought the moon cake molds I couldn't resist.
I have never made chocolate eggs before, I always thought it looked a bit complicated, but for some reason I thought it was time to do try it out. It was not easy, I guess is one of these things where "practice makes perfect" gives you encouragement. But it was so much worth it, egg mold is here to stay.
The mold is made of hard plastic and gives 9 whole eggs. Each egg half holds 2 tsp of water, so they are just perfect size, not too small not too big. What I did was, I melted chocolate, filled each half with a bit less then 1 tsp and I spread it around by moving the mold. Then I put it in the fridge until chocolate was hard and repeated the coating 3 times more, but with a brush, thought it was easier.
The tricky part was to make nice, flat, thick edges as they are important when you are putting two egg halves together. And to keep egg shells nice and shiny, next time I will wear plastic gloves.
As much as I was excited about the chocolate shells that much I was excited about the filling inside the eggs. After some creative thinking the result was eggs filled with ingredients from 3 different continents and 3 different countries.
Jasmine tea and dark chocolate ganache - tea was discovered in China and is very important in Chinese culture. There are close to 1000 different types of tea but in this chocolate egg I chose jasmine. Jasmine and dark chocolate go so well together. I infused tea with hot cream, strained it and mixed with chocolate to make ganache, wonderful!
Daim bar and milk chocolate ganache - Daim is so Swedish, so Swedish you can find it at IKEA. It is made of crunchy almond bar and covered with milk chocolate. I crushed some of it and mixed with a milk chocolate ganache, love it love it love it...
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Amaranth and cajeta - cajeta is Mexican syrup that is made of caramelized goats milk...yes goats milk! I am lucky enough to have supply of cajeta and amaranth all year round from Mexico.
Green tea and amaranth - this one is a hit! I made white chocolate ganache, added some green tea powder (Chinese, not Japanese matcha) and mixed with some amaranth.
Zucchini is really one of my favourite vegetables. No matter how you prepare it, it always tastes delicious. And there are tons of ways to prepare zucchini; I use it quite often, as you will discover here on the blog.
However breaded zucchini is one of my favourite things to eat for a late weekend breakfast. And honestly I could eat it every day; sometimes I do that. Mostly when I run short of those 2 late-breakfast-days a week, then I make it as a side dish for dinner or lunch. And no, I never get tired of it. Especially since I discovered amaranth and now sometimes use it instead of breadcrumbs…variation we like after all.
When it comes to preparing breadcrumbs and amaranth covered zucchini I prepare them in two different ways. Breadcrumbs need oil and frying so I fry breaded zucchini in olive oil as usual.
But when it comes to amaranth covered zucchini I bake it for 10 minutes in the oven on a very lightly oiled foil. I do that because when frying amaranth it absorbs oil very easily and can get a bit burned in taste, so I prefer to bake it in the oven.
Breadcrumbs/amaranth covered zucchini
serves 2
1 medium zucchini 
some salt
1 egg
2 tbs milk
salt and pepper
approx. 0.5 dl of flour
approx. 3 dl of breadcrumbs or popped amaranth
olive oil
Peal zucchini and cut it in 2-3 pieces of the same size. Slice each piece in 0.5cm thick slices, sprinkle some salt over and let them rest for 15 minutes so that excess water comes out.
In the meantime prepare 3 deep plates. In the first one put the flour. In the second one beat the egg, add milk, salt and pepper. And in the third one put breadcrumbs or popped amaranth.
Dip each slice of zucchini first in the flour, then in the egg and last in the breadcrumbs or amaranth. Zucchini covered with breadcrumbs is fried in some olive oil and zucchini covered with amaranth is baked in the oven on a lightly oiled foil, on 200˚C for about 10 minutes. Turn them around after 5 minutes.
Yet another Mexican obsession of mine…amaranth! This tiny seed is more than perfect. Amaranth has been used by ancient Aztecs and is still used in Mexico. Most commonly candy bars called "Alegría" are made of it. But amaranth can be used in many, many other ways: you can make porridge, you can make flour of it, you can pop it and make sweets or add to your cereal, you can cook it just as you cook quinoa…
For all these reasons I am really fascinated by this little grain and as a plus it is also ultra healthy, gluten-free, vegan, heart-friendly, just name it. And the best thing ever, I can buy it in my local supermarket here in Sweden.
As I first tried Amaranth in an amaranth-chocolate bar I will also start my amaranth-recipe series with it. It is very easy to make it, hardest part being popping amaranth. As the seed is very tiny (poppy seed tiny) is very easy to burn it. It is almost like popping popcorn but without oil, so make sure you have a lid ready.
What I do is the following: first I heat a 15 cm saucepan, it needs to be very hot, and add no more than 1 tablespoon of amaranth. Pop them, shaking the pan all the time, for about 5 seconds, lift from the stove and let finish popping.
The one on the left on the picture above is amaranth that has not been popped and the one in the right is popped one.
Amaranth chocolate bars
100gr chocolate (white, milk, dark)
10 tablespoons popped amaranth (or as much as you like, but not to much as the chocolate needs to hold it together)
Melt chocolate, let it cool a bit, it should not be hot when you stir in amaranth. Stir in amaranth, mix well and shape as you want. Let chill and is ready to serve!
Amaranth is one of my favourite foods, you can do so much with it, it is delicious and super healthy. I found the recipe for this amaranth souffle at the website of a Californian company called "Rancho Gordo". They produce many great foods and amaranth is one of them.
