Chocolate “sausage” (shokoladnaya kalbasa)

Do I have a good one for you guys today! This is part III of the first Russian dinner I’ve ever hosted (don’t forget to check out the posts on the main course and sides, if you missed them) – dessert, my favorite course of all! This is a recipe for chocolate sausage but don’t worry, there is nothing meaty about it (I’m starting to realize that Russians like mimicking other things, even animals, and turn them into desserts – black poodle anyone?).

Does this remind you of sausage? I don’t know… I think I screwed up on the aesthetics a bit (I think the crinkles in the saran wrap would have made it more sausage-like) but I can tell you that this was basically chocolate crack. That means you should make it asap. There are only 4 ingredients and there is no baking required (you do need time for them to set in the freezer)! Super easy – like I said, you don’t want to miss this one!

Here is how it all goes down (the recipes came from here but since you most likely can’t read Russian I’ll share it below 😉 )…

Ingredients (makes 5 “sausages”):

400-500 grams of tea biscuits (any other simple vanilla cookies work… I ran out midway and bought a package of original Digestives in addition to the package you see below) – about 2 packages

200 grams butter (about 2 sticks) softened (but not melted)

1 can sweetened condensed milk (I used low fat and it worked great. I bet fat free would even work)

4T unsweetened cocoa powder

[Equipment: parchment paper or plastic wrap]

Cookie closeups:

English tea biscuits

Original digestives:

Let’s go!

1. Break up cookies into small pieces (about 1/2″ but no need to be exact). Depending on how crumbly your cookies are, you may do so by hand or use a food processor to speed up the process (notes: digestives are quite buttery so breaking them by hand was better, otherwise they’d turn into dust in 1 second in the food processor).

2. Mix in soft butter

Hands are the easiest tool here

3. Add in cocoa powder

4. Mix in condensed milk

5. Form the “dough” into 5 sausages (just place a portion of it in the parchment paper and squeeze into a tube)

Freeze for at least 3 hours, until hardened. It actually keeps best in the freezer, so you can just keep a few rolls in there until you have company or want a sweet treat

6. Enjoy your fruits of labor. Now wasn’t that easy?

The butter, cookies and condensed milk all really become one and just melt into each. It makes for amazingly creamy fudge-like little cookies. I dare you to eat just a few (someone, ok me, had almost a whole sausage today after taking these pictures. Oops.)

Make them!! 😎