Darienne

One the side benefits of working with chocolate and other goodies...you get to eat the 'seconds'.

Lovely, Chocolot. Looks as if you and your new toy will have a long and prosperous life together.

I am intending to make Palanquetas with panela and have found a number of recipes. Fany Gerson speaks of making them with honey or piloncillo, but her recipe calls for plain white sugar and corn syrup of all things. Can I just slot in panela? Does anyone have a tried and true recipe? Thanks.

I'm going to buy one of the cane stalks and try the above. I'll report back.

My nose is pressed against the screen, looking at everything. The mountains are wonderful. A local supermarket has long sugar canes for sale. We don't have a press naturally. What could we possibly do with a 3' length of sugar cane?

You think maybe Ambato is the Garden of Eden? What a market! Such produce! OMG!!! And the panela... Tried the new trick I learned on an Indian Jaggery website about heating the Panela in the microwave to soften it. Saves so much time and arm work. But then you probably knew it anyway. I do envy you. On so many counts. Am enjoying this blog immensely and it's scarcely begun!

Oh my! Also pork butt for $10 for 3 pounds? Not in my neck of the woods.

Been there. Done that. Very nice. Can't think of ever using 'brown sugar' again.

Good idea. Did you use jaggery? Can you get it in your area?

If you like deep and delicious, try for Panela. :wub: Darker than piloncillo.

That's all there is to know basically. I stuck a smallish block of panela in the microwave. Zapped it for 15 secs. No dice. Another 10. Another 10. Any by God, I pressed down and it crumbled. Just like that! When I think of all the work... Should add that while doing it with the palm sugar chunks, the stuff crumbled and my finger ended up in a small of pool of yikes! melted and very hot and sticky palm sugar which I of course stuck right into my mouth for help. Fortunately, it was not THAT hot. Yeah, it tasted good.

To date I have chopped away at my blocks of Piloncillo or Panela, or shaved them with a sharp knife or even grated them. Such work. Today in a recipe for Chikki (Indian Brittle), I found a tip for using Jaggery...the Indian equivalent. Put the block into the microwave for 15 - 20 seconds and then press down and see if it crumbles. Use the microwave in increments of a few seconds until you can press down on the block and it will crumble. Be careful not to melt the sugar. So I tried it with both a block of palm sugar and panela and it works! My question is: would it harm the sugar in any way to be treated this way? I am NOT a fan of microwaves and don't use mine any more than necessary. Foolish, perhaps, but then....

I have no idea at this point. It's up to the teaching chef I guess. I wrote to her that I had some panela...you can't get it here...but in her reply she didn't mention that. What is your favorite kind? Or favorites? And do you make it usually? Any tips to give me????

If there is one food that people are 'fussy' about, it's eggs. I can eat a lot of foods which I don't particularly like cooked in some fashion, but not eggs. I had a horrible experience as a child with a woman who insisted I eat a soft-boiled egg and since then after years of not eating 'eggs', as such, I can eat them again...but only cooked the way I want them. I cook my own scrambled eggs, thank you, and my husband cooks his. The breakfast hour makes it only more critical. So like some others post above, I wonder if 'creamy' eggs were difficult for your visitor to get down. Nope. Be a gracious hostess and let the man eat his McDonald's meal...and their eggs are truly awful.

Dinner tonight was my favorite treat: Dessert as Dinner. And by the time I remembered my plan to take a photo of the dinner...it was completely gone. Stumbled today across a Mark Bittman NYT recipe and video for Free Form Apple Tart and seeing as we still have three containers full of falls from our trees waiting to be juiced, I took some, in this case, Northern Spies, and made the pie, which Bittman also called a pizza because it took that shape. He suggested ice cream, whipped cream or creme fraiche...we used 3 year old white cheddar. Amazing. :wub:

If you re-read the sequence of posts, you'll see that I added cream the first time and that was a disaster...the butter separated out. Then I received advice to add water and that worked just fine.

I actually did it a couple of years ago. I was almost a total caramel novice and yet it worked quite simply. Should add that the details are a bit fuzzy except that I had no trouble. Beginner's luck??? Found it. Go to "Caramel Troubleshooting", post #241 and following...

Ditto here I could mention that I am taking this class soon about making edible gifts from around the world and the Chikki is one of the items.

You must have a friend who has a grateful dog. No tough meat goes to waste in this household.

I am really looking forward to PanaCan's blog. It will be full of wonderful baked goods and foods which will make me drool with joy. Hooray for PanaCan!!!

Absolutely brilliant!!!

October 2009 for the above quote in response to my question about storage of toffee. What it doesn't make clear is the size of butter content which makes for shorter or longer storage. I just made some butter-crunch toffee: almond topped, dark Chocolate coated toffee with slivered almonds in it. DH wants to give a couple of 1/2 pound boxes to the workmen who are putting our foundation back where it belongs...as on the upright supports of our century farmhouse...and not fallen down. Horrible job, in the cold and rain too. Oh yes, it was a surprise. The recipe calls for: one pound of butter to 2 3/4 cups of sugar. Does this amount of butter mean that it will keep longer or shorter? I have four packaged boxes left. (You cannot keep this toffee unpacked or you are doomed.) (Well, I am, anyway). How long can it keep? If I also put it into an air-tight container? Is the Christmas season just TOO far away, as in say the second week of December? It can certainly be distributed right away, but I thought I would ask. Thanks.

Training dogs. Sorry

Everything looks so interesting and incredible. Oh my. :wub:

Your vegetarian photos made me salivate, just looking at them. :wub: I would love to try custard apple ice cream. Aha. Googled it and found it's like a cherimoya. We don't get them up in the far frozen north very often, but I do like them.