Chocolate Ravioli

This is the 200th post for Vegetarian & Cooking!

We knew we needed to make something special, and we have been wanting to try chocolate ravioli for some time. These really look great and taste good too. There is a lot of work that goes into making them, but it is worth it for how cool these look, and it is always fun to use the pasta maker for a recipe. The original recipe comes from bellalimento.

Ingredients:

Dough

-2 1/2 cups flour

-1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

-3 eggs

-1/2 cup water

Filling

-2 Tbsp sugar

-1 tsp vanilla extract

-8 oz mascarpone

Topping

-strawberry jelly

-white wine

-cut strawberries

or

-caramel ice cream topping

Mix the ingredients for the dough.
Add in the water slowly until the dough starts to come together.

Flour your work surface.

Knead the with your hand for at least 5 minutes.
It should form a ball.
Be sure to flour your hands and add flour to the dough as
 needed so it isn't too sticky

Wrap up the dough and let it sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour. 

We used my grandma's pasta maker and ravioli press.

Flour the dough a bit more. Cut it into small pieces.

Run the dough through the machine on the largest setting.

Run through again so the dough is thinner.
Mine was on setting 6 out of 7 at the end.

Once the pieces get bigger it is helpful to have 2 people.

Lay the dough over the ravioli press.

Press the other piece with the wells over the dough.

Make the filling. Just combine mascarpone, sugar and vanilla in a small bowl.

Fill each ravioli with a small amount of filling.

Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough and cut out each ravioli.

If you use enough flour, you should be able
to flip over the tray and the ravioli will fall out
in individual pieces.

Put the ravioli on a sheet of wax paper until you are
ready to cook them.

There are a lot of scraps left over, just put them together
and make another sheet.

When you finish the ravioli, boil water with 2 tablespoons
of sugar. Add a few ravioli, not too many that it crowds the pot.
Cook the ravioli for 2 minutes after they float to the top.
These cook very quickly.

Make the sauce.
Heat up a few spoonfuls of jelly in a small pot on medium heat.
Add a splash of white wine, enough to get a thin consistency.
Cut up some fresh or frozen strawberries and add to the pot.

Spoon some strawberry sauce on the ravioli.

We also tried baking some of the ravioli.
Cook it the same way as above, then spread out
on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

For these, we tried putting a little caramel sauce on top.

These are outstanding to make for a special occasion. There wasn't much of a taste difference between the baked ravioli and the ones that were only boiled, so I would recommend just boiling them. I really like strawberries and strawberries and chocolate are such a good combination, so I thought that was a good way to eat them. Alecia and my mom liked the caramel sauce, so experiment and see which sauce you like. Either way, the chocolate and the filling were a great combination.