I know that making cezerye does not involve baking, so it doesn’t count as a part of the Baking Challenge. Therefore, I decided to change the name of my challenge to New Year Dessert Challenge (NYDC), which means I can make more truffles (especially chocolate truffles!) in the following days too.Remember my cezerye trial decades ago? Well, I decided to make cezerye again, but as in the form of a truffle. Also, I didn’t put any nuts inside my cezerye last time. This time, I added chopped hazelnuts, increased the amount of cinnamon and added some ground cloves. Result? Well, I don’t think I need to tell you that!

I also tried to go further and dipped some of the cezerye in chocolate, turning out be an epic fail!! Now you may think how it is possible to fail with something covered in chocolate, but it was really disgusting. I really don’t recommend it. In summary, you can make chocolate-covered cover everything (even chickpeas) but cezerye!

Cezerye Truffles

makes 20 truffles

Ingredients:

- 300 gr (10.6 oz). carrots, finely grated

- 150 gr (5.3 oz.) sugar (I used white sugar, but brown sugar can be better, since it increases the caramel flavor)

- 1 cup water

- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

- 1 teaspoon ground cloves

- a pinch of salt

- 1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped hazelnuts or walnuts

- coconut flakes (to cover)

Directions:

Put the carrots, water, and spices to a large pan and cook over medium heat. When the mixture starts to boil, reduce the heat and let the mixture cook for 45 minutes, or until all the water is absorbed and you get a sticky mixture (for more instructions, see this post).

Take the pan from heat and mix in the nuts. Let the cezerye cool in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

Take the cezerye from the refrigerator and using a spoon, shape 4 cm (2-inch) balls with your hands.

Cover the balls with coconut.

Being a senior year in college, I have to make my senior project (obviously). Our team is doing a “green” project for Unilever’s Heartbrand (ice-cream), and we have a project proposal meeting tomorrow. Since we are the host of this meeting, we thought it would be nice to serve some treats, other than the usual ones bought from a patisserie.

So, we decided to make some savory and sweet treats for the participants: the sweets are mini cupcakes and sugar cookies, and the savories are two types of cheesy canapés. We made all of them so improvisational that they don’t have any recipe. So, you have to enjoy the photos only..

Making Sinem’s cupcake base:

We filled the cupcakes with ready-to-use cake filling (Normally, I never use ready-to-use stuff, but we had no time!):

Decorating the cupcakes with an impromptu frosting (it has melted chocolate, whipping cream and some cake filling):

Sugar cookies from Joy of Baking:

Mozzarella, tomato and basil canapés on Wasabröd crispbread:

Herbed mild cream cheese canapés with olive & walnut topping:

And the leftovers: