Tips, Practice mise en place; have everything measured and close by before you start cooking. Make sure that your parchment or foil lined pan is ready before you start cooking.
Don’t multitask while you’re making candy. Caramel goes from perfect to charcoal in a split second.
All my success in caramel making is the result of following David Lebovitz’s guidance.
Perhaps a scientist can explain why, but I’ve found that room temperature butter doesn’t emulsify so I use cold butter.
Trust your thermometer. Every time I make this caramel it looks and smells burnt, but it comes out perfect every time. Speaking of thermometers, I love my Thermapen. They are expensive, but to me, so worth the price.
In a similar vein, Smitten Kitchen’s apple cider caramels are delicious, and start with reducing a quart of apple cider. They’re fairly simple to make.
Yes! I love the smitten kitchen apple cider caramels. I always use trader Joe’s honey crisp apple cider to make them. That cider has SO much apple flavor, especially compared to other store bought brands like Mott’s.
Indian sweet shops, well…I can go on and on about how much I enjoy the artistry, flavors and surprises in store. Kid IN a candy store.
I did try my hand at burfi some time back; went with bite sized balls instead of cut squares. Tasty and a real treat. Comes together very quickly with little fuss but I will leave the vast array of burfi to the masters.
I made these chocolate/peanut butter eggs from Sally’s Baking Addiction.
They are delicious. My husband, who generally dislikes candy, can’t stop eating them.
I used Callebut Bittersweet 60/40 chocolate.
Having been raised by 60s hippies who only permitted me to eat food that they deemed unprocessed, I am unused to the flavor of supermarket peanut butter such as Skippy and Jif. Thankfully health food stores have started carrying a hybrid called no-stir. It has sugar and salt, but no hydrogenated fat, stabilizers, etc. I used it in this recipe.
I sprinkled Maldon salt on top, because salty and sweet together are the best.
I am don’t make any candy except brittle. I make peanut brittle at Christmas & I have a dear friend who adores this maple walnut brittle, which I make once a year for her birthday (today.) It is rich as blazes and one seems to either love or loath it. My note from 2018 is “Too rich”
Chocolate walnut FUDGE! It used to be a once a year Christmas endeavor but we somehow dropped it. Time to restart it. Good homemade fudge is nirvana! Looking for a recipe to link, I was appalled to see that almost all internet recipes are of the marshmallow bent. NO, NO, NO! This is the real deal, although we often used a can of evaporated milk instead of half and half. ENJOY!
No, what you picture is “Rocky Road”, a different and, yes, delicious candy. What I was referring and objecting to us the shortcut version of old fashioned fudge in which marshmallows are melted into and become indistinguishable in the fudge. You lose the entire flavor and texture of the original thing. Maybe a lost taste today. I believe See’s still makes a good one.
I mostly make “bark” at Christmas, , and once made ?truffles. I used to make dipped pretzelsI; not sure if that counts. No recipe but I worked really hard on tempering.
lookin good @shrinkrap. i really enjoy bark. Sometimes with broken up candy canes during xmas season.
@claus would probably appreciate this, but Danes being Danes, my relatives make marzipan stuffed dates coved in chocolate with an almond sliver, and chocolate nougat balls covered in marzipan then in chocolate with candy lavender on top and stuff like that…it all comes down to the special ingredients brought back from Denmark on the trips back and forth.
Stranded at home, surrounded by snow and ice with nothing to do. Decided to hand-make some ‘International themed’ Roasted Hazelnut Dark Chocolate Bark.
Slow roast raw Turkish Hazelnut in a cast iron skillet. Let cool and add to a mixture of hand-tempered 85% cocoa, Swiss; 70% cocoa, Peruvian and 60% cocoa French chocolate chips.
