Hello, everyone!

Almost one year ago, I started changing my living and eating habits towards healthy life style. By that moment, I was on the program for loosing a weight that was focused not so much on a temporary diet as usually, but more like changing your life style in general. But there was one problem, I couldn’t eat anything sweet at the beginning of the program, so I couldn’t bake. I knew that I wouldn’t follow this advice for the rest of my life, and instead I have started looking for healthy desserts. And you know what, I found it – Zephyr (Зефір in Ukrainian).

Zephyr is a very tasty and easy to make dessert that needs just 6 simple ingredients (for classic version or 7 ingredients for different tastes).

Today we will make a strawberry zephyr and you need:

1. Apples – 1-2 pcs or 125 g of Apple purée (250 g of Apple purée for classic zephyr but without strawberries)
2. Frozen strawberries – 400 g or 125 g of Strawberry purée
3. Icing sugar (sugar powder) – 250 g
4. Water – 150 ml
5. Egg – 1 egg white 
6. Caster sugar (regular sugar) – 440 g
7. Agar-Agar – 8 g

Start with apple purée

We will start with making an apple purée first. For this you need to wash, peel and cut the apples:

The next step is to put them in a microwave in high medium power for 8 minutes. You can also bake them, but it will take longer time and apples will change the colour. I like to use a microwave because when apples are ready, they will look like this:

The next step is to mesh them into a purée:

It is very important that any used purée has a very fine consistence. Therefore,  we will sieve it before using. Then weight 125 g of it and put aside for now.

Now strawberry purée

We are done with the apple purée. Let’s switch to our strawberries. To make a purée from strawberries, first of all you need to take them from a freezer at least 2-3 hours before using them. What to do if you forgot to take strawberries from the freezer in advance? No worries, we can fix that. There is a simple solution.

Take your frozen strawberries and grind them into small pieces (you can use blender for it, or anything suitable for ice).

As you can see, it still doesn’t look like a purée. So we put our grinder strawberries into a casserole, and warm it up at the medium temperature (not higher cause it will burn) until it has melted, and then boil it for ca 5 minutes – like on the picture below.

Then we need to mesh it and cook for ca. 15-20 minutes. We need to evaporate water because too much liquid will damage the consistence of zephyr in the end.

Do you remember that strawberries have seeds?! And we don’t want to feel them in so delicate dessert. So don’t forget to sieve it with the same sieve as for the apple purée:

Mixing apple and strawberry purées with icing sugar

Our strawberry purée is ready for use. Weight 125 g of it, and, yay, we can start mixing ingredients.  Take 125 grams of apple purée and add them into a very deep ball, then add 250 grams of icing sugar, and 125 grams of strawberry purée on top. Load your food processor and run it for 2 minutes at medium speed (e.g. 3 out of 6).

Preparing caramel with agar-agar mixture

You can leave this mix, and start preparing mix of caramel with agar-agar. The most important is to boil the caramel to 110 °C. But no worries, I will tell you what to do if you don’t have a thermometer for cooking at home. Just keep following all steps below.

Take 8 grams of agar-agar and 150 ml of water and mix them in the casserole (deep one because mix will increase in size a lot). Start boiling it at the highest temperature and steer it all the time. When you see that agar-agar has melted and starts boiling, add 440 of casting sugar to mixture and keep steering. Set timer to 10 minutes or use a thermometer (we need 110 °C).

Then 5 minutes after you have added sugar to mixture, come back to the purée mixture. Start you food processor again also at medium speed  (3 out of 6) and add 1 egg white. Let it mix for 3 minutes and stop processor. (don’t forget to steer our caramel from time to time). When 10 minutes are gone or your thermometer shows 110 ºC, take a caramel mixture aside. Let it stay until bubbles will disappear. And you can start you food processor again.

The final step is slowly to enter the hot caramel into the mixture in the food processor, while it is working. After all caramel mixture was added, you need to continue mixing all ingredients at medium speed for at least 5 minutes or until mixture will be 40 ºC.

The fun part! Use your fantasy..

The Zephyr mixture is ready, and now very quickly we need to pipe our Zephyr. The speed is important here because agar-agar starts solidification process at room temperature, so you need to be just fast enough.

Choose a nozzle to shape your zephyr (anything you like), prepare piping bag/bags (or one big if you have) by placing it in deep glass. Fix it with a hand and add zephyr mixture in it (1 table spoon at a time). You are ready to start shaping your “little drops of heaven”.

My congratulations!

Your zephyr is ready, and you just need to wait 12 hours before it can be served. Before taking it from baking sheets, cover it with icing sugar, so it will not stick to your fingers.

12 hours later

Zephyr is ready to be served. It taste the best with cup of coffee or tea. If you liked the recipe and tried it, please share your results in the comments. Or you can ask me any question you have.

Enjoy Zephyr! See you next time!