5794 replies to this topic

[Darienne]

Pot Luck dinner tonight. Made this Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Pie and a second demi-pie with the leftovers.

Didn't have the correct ingredients...what else is new? so made some changes. Subbed a graham cracker crust for the chocolate biscuit one, condensed milk for the whipped cream and sugar, and added a bit of homemade raspberry liqueur. Topped it with 54% dark chocolate ganache, but if I make it again, I'll use 70% dark. Too sweet for me, but Ed and the furnace guys loved it.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Stuart, what do you cross your buns with? They look fantastic!

Aw thanks :)
I just use a flour paste - flour and water with a bit of oil so they don't get so hard, and usually a small amount of a sweetener (sugar, honey etc) and maybe a bit of mixed spice, so they don't taste quite so pastey :P

Sometimes they turn out better than others - getting the perfect consistency so they pipe easily but hold their shape is a bit of guesswork but i'm getting better. These ones were also glazed afterwards which always makes them look glossy and beautiful.

In fact, what am I saying?! Here's the recipe I used, which I pretty much followed exactly. Much easier to explain.
Although now that I look at it my crosses are much less defined than his, I guess I didn't follow that closely :)

Another nice option is to make a slash or even snip with scissors in a cross shape, so they open up slightly but have no paste. Looks kinda rustic/artisan.

[merstar]

I made two quarts of bittersweet chocolate ice cream. Mmmmmmm!

[Mette]

Chocolate-banana-layer cake with whipped cream for the sprogs' joint birthday. In the cellar as the fridge is full

[Kim Shook]

A cake I made this weekend for a BD at Mr. Kim’s office:

Lemonade Layer Cake. Don’t know where I got the recipe, but I wasn’t thrilled with it. The cake was too dense and heavy and the cream cheese icing was overly buttery and wasn’t very lemony.

Slice:

I may give the layers another chance in case I overbeat the batter or something, and use a different icing recipe.

[Chocolot]

These are what I spent all day making. Cute, but labor intensive.

Attached Images

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Edited by Chocolot, 18 April 2012 - 07:28 AM.

[tikidoc]

Those are adorable, Ruth! What's the filling?

[Chocolot]

Thanks. Honey ganache.

[Kouign Aman]

Kim, that lemon cake is so pretty!
Chocolot, adorable ladybirds!

I want to make a spicy hot hot hot hot hard candy for a friend,and could use some advice.
Last night I did a first quick and dirty trial run:
melted sugar, added chili oil & a bit of vinegar, made lozenges by dropping the mix onto foil.
It worked ok - they have a definite burn and arent super sweet.

But, they arent as fiery spicy as desired, and the oil is extracting itself from the lozenges.
I'd rather not be contaminating peoples fingers with super spicy oil.

(and it turns out the oil I used includes onion in the making. Onion is quite clear in the candies. Oops.)

Any suggestions on the best way to get that hot spicy flavor into the candy? Can it be extracted into vinegar or?
thanks

[DianaM]

They look great in the grass picture, the green makes the red really pop.

You have a lot of patience and a very steady hand, Ruth, they are absolutely charming!

Diana

[Tri2Cook]

Any suggestions on the best way to get that hot spicy flavor into the candy? Can it be extracted into vinegar or?
thanks

Capsaicin extract or an extract-based sauce from any place stocking super-hot hot sauces would add a serious heat kick as long as it had a flavor profile you were okay with (many of the non-sauce extracts are in an oil base but there would be so little necessary that oil leaching out may not be an issue). If you wanted to keep it simple, you could puree some habaneros (or bhut jolokia if you can find them) in water, strain and use that liquid as your water base in the candy. I've had habanero lollipops that were plenty hot enough for the average chile head but if you're really trying to melt someone's face, they may not be enough on their own. The ghost chiles might be. The right extract or extract sauce definitely would.

[minas6907]

Kouign Aman, I would stay away from extracts and oils that have been infused with chili, its hard to get alot of flavor with extracts in a hard candy without adding the additional unwanted water, and as for your oil, its sort of hard to tell what it was, I assume it was a cooking oil infused with chilies, in which case you would have to use a large amount of oil to get a nice flavor. Start off with a hard candy recipe, the one in Chocolates and Confections works wonderful, PM me if you want it. Then I'd get a pure chili oil from LorAnn Oils, like this one: https://www.lorannoi...li-natural.aspx

This will give you your hot hot hot hot hard candy. I'm not sure if your really into sugar pulling or anything, but you could make a rather awesome looking hard candy with yellow, orange, and red stripes. Otherwise, boil the candy, wait for it to cool down a little, add your chili oil, perhaps add some red color, and drop your lozenges, and watch your friend suffer. Alternatively, you could make little berlingots type candies by pouring the candy on a slab or silpat, waiting for it to cool until it holds its shape, and pulling it in a rope and cutting little drops, or make your friend a lollipop!

Additionally, stay away from vinegar, you really dont need it in hard candy, aside from the oil you added your first try, this would have contributed to making the candy a little stickier. You can use some cream of tartar, it makes the candy a little easier to handle of your doing pulling, but will shorten the shelf life. If your simply dropping or pouring the sugar to make drops, you dont need an acid.

[Kouign Aman]

Tri2Cook and minas6907, thanks for the recommendations and ideas.
This first try, I used about 2 tsp of the oil from a chinese condiment that is mashed peppers, oil (and apparently onions), with 2T sugar. Its good and hot, just not hot enough.

My friend wont suffer. She'll enjoy it. I'll know its finally spicy enough when I suffer. QC is gonna be ... interesting.

I'll post if I do more work on this idea.

[Mette]

Birthday season in the Temple household: strawberry and lemon ice-cream cake covered in green marzipan as per the birthday girl's request



For hot candies, why not just add cayenne?

[curls]

Mette, very pretty cake. The flavors sound great too. Happy Birthday to Rebecca.

Ruth, your chocolate lady bugs look adorable!

[Kouign Aman]

Mette, the cake is so pretty!
I think I may request marzipan to 'frost' my next bday cake.

Cayenne if I can pull the heat out, but I dont want the grit of the powdered peppers in the candy itself.
I started w powdered cayenne, but the capsaicin didnt extract into water well (no real surprise).

[minas6907]

You could load up the water used for the hard candy recipe with the Cayenne and bring to a boil to steep, then proceed to make the candy after straining it out. One advantage, I'd say, to using the concentrated oil is that its folded in as the candy is cooling, you dont have to boil it so your kitchen wont smell of Cayenne for days.

[annabelle]

Can't you steep some hot whole dried peppers and use the strained liquid to make the candy?

I'm not a candy maker, so ignore me if I'm in left field.

[deensiebat]

Chocolate chip cookie rolled in sesame seeds. Fairly standard dough, with just a bit of soy sauce and ginger thrown in.

[Darienne]

Chocolate chip cookie rolled in sesame seeds. Fairly standard dough, with just a bit of soy sauce and ginger thrown in.

Those look like black sesame seeds???

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Yup, unhulled sesame is black. I used it on the breaded chocolate bar a couple pages back.

[deensiebat]

Those look like black sesame seeds???

Yep. Regular tan sesame seeds would probably be delicious as well, but not as much fun visually. Though my friend did keep joking that "a mouse pooped ALL OVER these cookies!" Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks that's funny...

[Panaderia Canadiense]

LOL, deensie, my Mom looked over my shoulder and said something to the effect of "OMG, that cookie is covered in ants! What gives?" I snorted OJ all over the keyboard....

[Mjx]

Yesterday's birthday cake: classic devil's food cake layers and chocolate cream frosting (both from The Best Recipe), ginger preserve filling. The layers and frosting included black pepper, cloves, smoked salt, and vanilla bean to round out the chocolate flavour, and the Mackay's spiced ginger preserves were brightened with a bit of citric acid (I moistened the two layers with a bit of Borghetti before filling and icing).



(The ridiculously illegible mysterious inscription on the cake is my boyfriend's name... no, neither of us is a tween girl, why do you ask? )

[Mette]

(The ridiculously illegible mysterious inscription on the cake is my boyfriend's name... no, neither of us is a tween girl, why do you ask? )

The flavours sound great. I didn't realise that Krusty the Clown lives locally and is a tween

[Kouign Aman]

Pretty pastel stars.


The munchkin was given silicon cake pans with what I thought was an insane level of detail that would never survive baking. Nice to be wrong! Lemon cake with lemon glaze:



This is one of the chili-oil drop candies from above. I've got dried chilies waiting to be extracted for round 2.

[ScottyBoy]

Not the most flattering of plating but all the flavors fit with the PB&J theme that was requested. It's chocolate cake, peanut butter cream, salted caramel and cubes of strawberry and port.

[Tri2Cook]

Not the most flattering of plating but all the flavors fit with the PB&J theme that was requested. It's chocolate cake, peanut butter cream, salted caramel and cubes of strawberry and port.

Sounds tasty and looks good to me. PB&J is a theme that, in my opinion anyway, needs to have the components in close proximity. A PB&J sandwich wouldn't be the same with a bite of peanut butter here, a bite of jelly there. It needs to be all smashed together in the bread to do it's magic. Your dessert can be eaten in similar manner, some of everything in each bite... just like a good PB&J. Since that's what was requested, it's perfect. I don't think everything requires fussy arrangements.

[ScottyBoy]

Ah, well said, thank you.

[Wholemeal Crank]

My weekend treat: last night I made what
have now been independently confirmed (by two people I did not have to bribe to say YUM) as delicious caramels seasoned with Thai curry spices and peanuts, inspired by the Thai curry brittle from morninggloryconfections.com. Tiny Thai chiles, galangal, ginger, Thai lime leaf, lemongrass, coconut milk, and a spicy gingery aftertaste that has my mouth dancing with joy.

Thai Curry Caramels