Chocolatey Delights for Christmas

Rotimatic

The Holiday season for me meant the Diwali holidays back in India as a child. A month-long winter break around Diwali was a welcome change after half-yearly exams. That meant lots of travel, indulging in amazing food made by my grandmother, and playing all day with cousins. Moving overseas, the holiday season means the end of December, wherever we are in the world. Even though the time of the year has changed, some things remain constant; travel, food, and a lot more time to play for my children. 

Despite having different days of the year for my Diwali holidays vs my children’s holidays overseas, we have tried to maintain our Indian traditions for the festive season.  As our children are growing up, creating something novel and interesting during the winter holidays has become our new tradition. Ever since Rotimatic has become a part of our family, we are loving creating fun Rotimatic recipes. It is interesting to see how versatile Rotimatic can be. It is amazing how many new starters, desserts, and even main course dishes we have managed to make with this automatic roti maker. Rotimatic is truly more than just a flatbread maker in our kitchen! Our children love spending time making these items with us and of course eating them. We can’t ask for a better holiday tradition. 

Two years ago we had so much fun making rose-flavored fortune cookies using Rotimatic. The kids had a great time hiding messages inside and looking for those after baking the fortune cookies. Last year we made a gingerbread house for our friends, also using Rotimatic. They loved it!  Not in our wildest dreams did we imagine, we could make all this when we bought this automatic flatbread maker nearly four years ago. Keeping the festive theme in mind, what could we make this year? 

We decided to go with dark chocolate appetizers with a festive look. We narrowed down the items to chocolate diyas, chocolate trees, chocolate helices, hearts, flowers, and a star.

Let’s dive into the recipe right away. 

Choco sticks with rotimatic

Rotimatic settings:

Pizza

T:R:O 1:1:1

We find the Rotimatic pizza setting the most versatile. We have made such a wide variety of dishes with this setting, we would rank it #1. Oops, we cannot do without our chapatis/rotis either. The best thing about each setting is that we know exactly what to expect. Each pizza disc is of the same consistency and can be moulded in the exact same way each time.

Ingredients:
In the flour container:
Whole wheat flour, high fiber (1 cup)
Flaxseed flour (2 tsp)

Coating:
Dark chocolate
1. Lindt intense mint ( 1 bar)
2. Lint chilli ( 1 bar)
3. White chocolate ( 1/2 bar)

Decoration:
Quinoa puffs (2 tbsp)
Heart-shaped sprinkles
Butterfly shaped sprinkles

Rotimatic pizzas

We made 10 pizza discs using Rotimatic. As soon as the pizza discs were made, we moistened these generously with water and after a minute, the discs were pliable enough to be rolled thinner. All discs were rolled thinner, about 1.5 times the previous size, and cut into desired shapes. For the helices, thin strips we cut and twisted into helices. The ends were stuck on an aluminum foil by pressing them gently. For the cones, one pizza disc was cut into three triangles, each triangle was rolled into a cone and the two edges were pressed together to seal them. The pizza discs were soft enough to be sealed without additional water. In order to prevent puffing of the cones while baking, they were poked with a fork all over. We let the other shapes puff up during baking. 

Pizza cones and puffs

All shapes were baked in a pre-heated oven at 230°C for 4-6 minutes, removed from the oven carefully, and allowed to cool. Dark chocolate was melted by microwaving in a bowl for 1 minute. Different shapes were coated with different flavors by dipping the shapes in molten chocolate or coating with a spoon. These were allowed to dry in an aluminum foil. Before these were dry, the shapes were decorated with puffed quinoa or sprinkles. These shapes can be refrigerated for an hour for the chocolate to solidify. 

Choco delights

We had fun guessing which flavor we would get for each shape. These were devoured lovingly, making for an amazing holiday recipe. We all truly enjoyed making and eating all these dark chocolate goodies! For us the recipe ticked all the right boxes: healthy, holiday themed, fun, creative, and the most important, absolutely delectable. We wanted the treats to be memorable this year. This crazy, weird year was full of trying times for everyone, lots of quarantine family-time, full of rich memories and valuable life lessons. Nothing really changes with the new year, except for new hopes, aspirations and new opportunities.