Easy Chocolate Pretzels

Today I thought I would do some last minute Christmas preperations by making some delicious chocolate pretzels. These are so easy to make so I thought I'd share. 

You will need: 

• Traditionally shaped pretzels 
• Chocolate dipping wafers 
• Smarties 

Arrange pretzels on a baking sheet.  Place one dipping wafer upside down on each pretzel (the “tip” of the wafer rests in the centre whole of the pretzel): 

 

Place in a 225° to 250°F oven for 1 to 1 ½ minutes until the chocolate is softened/slightly melted. (My oven - 225°F for 1 minute 40 seconds.) Do NOT over bake! You may have to play around with the temperature and time to get the perfect result. You want the chocolate to be softened, NOT melted. It should look like this when it comes out of the oven: 

Place one smartie on each dipping wafer:

Let cool. You can put your tray in the freezer to speed this up or in my case outside in the snow!

The pretzels are now completed. These make a very easy and tasty gift and can be made at any occasion Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day etc... Enjoy!

- Corry

Sushi Making!

Today while making sushi with my mom's friend from Japan I thought to myself  "what better way to start a daily blog then by telling the world how to make real, Japanese Sushi" so here it goes:

What you will need:

• A bamboo sushi roller, also called "makisu" 
• Steam cooked, medium grain, white rice *For every 2 cups of uncooked rice, after cooking add: 4 tbsp vinegar, 3 tbsp sugar and a pinch of salt to COOKED rice, this will preserve the rice for longer. Make sure rice is cooled completely before making sushi 
• Dried seaweed sushi sheets

To fill inside the sushi you can use from two to all of the ingredients listed:

• Leg-style imitation crab (each leg torn into 3 lengthwise)
• Chunky light tuna (broken up and mixed with a tablespoon of mayonnaise)
• Cucumber (sliced vertically into thin, 3" long pieces) 
• Avocado (cut in half and sliced lengthwise) 
• Teriyaki chicken (chicken is cooked in a teriyaki sauce) 
• Baby carrots (cooked, sliced in half) 

Now that you have all of your ingredients prepared you are ready to make the sushi. Don't worry, it's not as hard as you may think!

You will notice that the seaweed sheets have a shiny side and a more dull side, as well as parallel lines. 

Place one of your seaweed sheets on top of your bamboo sushi roller, shiny side down with the lines running horizontally. Then, with wet hands, you will lightly spread the rice onto the bottom 3/4's of the seaweed sheet like so:

Now that you have your rice base down you are ready to put your filling in. Line any combination of your prepared vegetables and/or seafood/meat (I chose avocado and imitation crab) in the middle of the rice as shown here:

You are now ready to roll the sushi!
You are going to make one BIG roll to start off. The first roll you will take the bottom of the paper and roll it up so that the bottom of the rice meets up with the top of the rice. Using the bamboo roller to help you make your first big roll:

Before you continue rolling make sure and squeeze the roll to make sure the rice and fillings are compact in the sushi roll.To finish off the rolling you will simply want to fold the bamboo roller back a little bit and finish rolling: 

Here you can see I've folded back the bamboo roller so it's easy for me to finish rolling. 














Your roll of sushi is nearly ready, all you have left to do is cut the sushi. Make sure your knife is kept wet so that it will smoothly cut through the sushi: 

Cut sushi into even pieces and place onto a plate or serving dish. 








You have now completed your sushi. Serve with soy sauce and wasabi. Enjoy :) 

- Corry