These luscious Russian chocolate cakes are similar to brownies and have a delicate cheesecake like filling. This light filling made with cottage cheese tvorog is a perfect complement to the mere chocolateness of the shortbread crust and topping.Spoil yourself with this fairly easy recipe or tantalize the taste buds of your guests!
Delicious and very easy Russian dessert. Only a few ingredients and several minutes of active time will result in a great dessert suitable for a party. In the original recipe a traditional diary product smetana is used but you can substitute it with other similar products – sour cream, plain yoghurt or crème fraîche.
Scrumptious chocolatey Russian kartoshka cakes made with cocoa powder and condensed sweetened milk will not stay long on the plate! Very easy to assemble, your only challenge when making these non-baking treats will be restraining yourself from eating them on your own during the process. Happy guests would be a reward for these efforts. “Kartoshka” means “potatoes” in Russian and these cakes indeed look like the unpeeled vegetables. However the sweet chocolaty taste has nothing in common with the real “kartoshka”.The original recipe calls for a sponge cake as the base for these treats, but you can also use shortbread cookies. You will also need some butter, cocoa powder and sweetened condensed milk.
Ingredients
2/3 cansweetened condensed milk(270 gr/9.5 oz)
100 gramsbutter, softened(3.5 oz)
500 gramssponge cake or shortbread cookies(16 oz)
5 tbsbitter cocoa powder(the one you need to boil)
2 tbscognac(optional)
Instructions
If you use a sponge cake: Tear the sponge cake into pieces and put in to preheated to 100C (210 F) oven for 20 min to dry the cake a bit. If you use cookies: break the cookies into smaller pieces.
In a bowl beat up the butter and condensed milk using a wooden spoon.
Blitz the prepared sponge cake or cookies in a blender into breadcrumb substance, add cognac. Mix in butter and condensed milk.
Form small potato-like cakes and powder them in cocoa. Put in a fridge for at least one hour.
Tip 1: Chocoholics can add cocoa into the biscuits/sponge cake mixture.
Tip 2: Bitter chocolate instead cocoa. You can melt bitter chocolate (70 per cent cocoa) putting a bowl with chocolate into a pan with water and bringing to boil until complete melting. Cover the cakes with the melted chocolate and leave to cool down.
