Carla Cardello is the creative woman behind the delicious food blog, Chocolate Moosey. If you’ve never been to her blog I implore you to do so right now! It’s full of original recipes and accompanying beautiful food photography. Creating delicious recipes, like her Strawberry Shortcake Truffles, and sharing them with the rest of the world is one way Carla finds her inner peace.
Oh, and she loves strawberries! So much so that when you search for strawberry on her website, fourteen pages come up! When I asked how it came to be that she had so many strawberry recipes, she shared the following story.
Every summer, my dad and I pick fresh strawberries from the local farm. Surprisingly, we didn’t start doing this until I was in college when he realized how much I loved food and making recipes. This year, we picked almost six pounds of beautifully ripened berries. Once home, I make strawberry jam and some form of shortcake. I always test some new concepts, too. Some of my newly developed recipes this season include Strawberry Shortcake Truffles, Chocolate Covered Strawberries, and Strawberry Lemonade Ice Cream.
A short roundup of some of Carla’s amazing strawberry recipes.
Carla began writing about food in 2007 during a study abroad trip to Ireland. For the first time in her life she shopped for groceries for herself. Preparing food, it turned out, was going to become not only a necessary task but one that would also help her overcome the overwhelming homesickness she sometimes felt. Carla shared her creations with her newly-found Irish friends and continued cooking and sharing when she returned home. Cooking became the perfect creative outlet to help her combat loneliness and depression.
Carla’s wide swath of creativity in the kitchen is linked back to her mother’s magazine collections. As a kid she would tear out pages with recipes that caught her eye filling up multiple binders with photos and recipes she wanted to make.
With no formal culinary school training, Carla has relied on what she has learned from others online. Neither of her parents were masters in the kitchen. In fact, it turns out that Carla has made more of an influence on her parents’ cooking than the other way around. She has inspired them to cook from scratch!
Carla doesn’t stop at recipes on her blog. You’ll also find short stories, giveaways and even in-depth, yet easy to grasp, introductions to photography like this post Understanding Aperture (A.K.A. How To Make Your Background Blurry). Oh and the name Chocolate Moosey? It was named after a stuffed moose she earned by selling Girl Scout cookies. She calls him her little mascot.
Find out more from Carla by following her on Twitter, liking her Facebook page and checking out her great shots on Instagram. She also has a Google+ page and Pinterest board, sure to make your mouth water!