Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Baby spinach, kiwi, coconut water Celery (add a few leaves), frozen mango cubes, coconut water Baby cavolo nero, banana, spirulina and natural apple juice Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Nama choco are my favourite Japanese chocolates, to make them I followed  this  recipe from talented blogger Nami of  Just One Cookbook . Basically it is the same recipe for chocolate ganache: two parts good quality chocolate to one part of cream, and this time I used Whittakers  Dark Cacao  62%. Brake the chocolate with a knife and then melt with the cream over a pot of water at  Bain Marie . Pour into a rectangular/square container, smooth the top and refrigerate. When set cut with a warm knife, rinsing the knife in hot water and drying it between each cut. Yum, the chocolates already look yummy as they are!! At this stage you should dust them with cocoa, but after doing that I added some colour. Mostly I used  Fresh As  powders: passion fruit, pineapple, strawberry and blackcurrant. Then I used some  Fresh As  dried blueberries slices, and some spirulina powder (green tea would go well too!). So all the col...

It is raining in Auckland today, but the bush looks happy and green, and the water tank is filling nicely (yes, we drink rain water!). It is also the last day of school for my daughter, holiday mood in the air, Xmas trees alight. The boy is already home, with a friend who is staying for a sleep over. They are playing with lego: domestic bliss for me! Yesterday I posted about making your own marzipan, and today I'll show you my little fruit. For the marzipan recipe click here , and for the colours I used some spirulina powder dissolved in hot water, and some juice from berries. Shape the fruit with your fingers, you can either colour the marzipan before, or you can paint it later using a small brush, or opt for a combination of the two for a stronger colour. For the stalks I used the smallest cloves that I could find, but this is because I made some miniature fruit! I like miniatures, in a past life I am sure that I belonged to a Jane Austen world where ladies painted miniatures a...

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel...

Here how I made a fondant frog on a lily pad, with natural colours (spirulina for green and berries for red). No words, just images, but feel free to ask questions :-) Photos (et all) by Alessandra Zecchini © Fin More flowers, tutorial with royal icing