Darienne

More Chocolate coated toffee for friends, acquaintances and people who help us. Spiced pecans. Raspberry truffles with the most amazing booze-filled ganache I have ever run across. Coconut-peanut butter truffles (not my favorite, but I tried 'em and, as they say, someone will eat them). They'll go to the Christmas Eve party along with Ed's Tortiere. Chocolate-dipped orange marshmallows for a dear friend who LOVES them. Dipped orange peels. At least I don't have to make any more toffee for now. I simply cannot discipline myself not to snack on it.

Thanks Theobroma, Your post cleared up a number of issues about Mexican chocolate that were puzzling me.

Well, sir, perfect or not, they do look mighty fine and delicious too. I am not a decorator sort of confectioner so I think someone else could comment better on your wafers. One thing for sure, I do love hokey!

I have two recipes printed on one page. I have to start saving the provenance!!! Both came off the internet. I usually go for websites like Epicurious. I sort of travel between the two of them. I do use oil. I do use lots of spinach. I use 3 eggs. No onion. No garlic. Feta cheese. Lots of phyllo. Salt and pepper. Nothing else. Make it in a casserole dish. Cut it in lozenge shapes before baking. Love it to pieces. Eat it with Moussaka. Even freeze the finished dish and thaw and eat latter.

Well put, Mr. Pringle. One change I might make is to cut the slab into cubes before the chocolate bottom has hardened too much or the chocolate layer may not cut easily or straight. If I recall correctly, some chocolatiers do not even used tempered chocolate for the bottoming.

Brian, it's not my method at all. I am just a novice at this whole business and not very dexterous to boot. That's mostly why I used this method. It seemed simpler than the traditional ball shape and therefore less subject to failure on my part. Recchiuti, Greweling and Shotts all describe this method and use it in some of their recipes. Perhaps I have used an incorrect word to describe it and that's why you are asking me about it. And I don't have a slab ganache recipe either. Any ganache which is a bit stiff is suitable. I'm not sure what kind of information you want. You can find the directions for using slabbed ganaches in Peter Greweling, Chocolates and Confections, Andrew Shotts, Making Artisan Chocolates or Michael Recchiuti, Chocolate Obsession.

Exquisite.

Totally and absolutely brilliant! Both you and Chef Crash!!

would like to see a photo of the completed confection, please.

There should be published some International Codes of Endeavor for Darienne. First: never do two things at once. And second: when you start screwing up everything, don't get stubborn and push on, just quit and go and lie down. You can make it tomorrow. OK. I completely messed up the first batch of toffee, DL's Buttercrunch Toffee for putting into ice cream. I cooked it a tad too long and plunged it into cold water to stop the cooking process: it immediately adhered to the pot. Panic. Panic. What to do? No time to go and search for vaguely remembered instructions. So I added some water and the mixture came off the walls and floor of the pot and once again I had a viable batch. But because it was just slightly on the burnt side I thought, and I added too much water,I didn't know how to cook it to return it to what correct temperature or consistency. Poured it over the nuts. Oh what the heck! Poured the melted chocolate over that. (Burned the next batch of nuts. Let the meat pies where the dogs could get them. They didn't. Lucky. Left the candy too near the counter edge. That's past when I should have quit. Now I am done.) Now I have a delicious strange concoction of toasted nuts, hardened chocolate topping...and...very soft chewy taffy. What should I do with it? What can I do with it? Thanks. ps. Did I quit? No. Cleaning up, I put the unused baking soda, which I left out of the second batch along with the vanilla, back into the cornstarch container. Right. pps. One hour later but not to late to edit. DH suggests rolling the concoction into balls and making a truffle shape, dipped in tempered bittersweet. A great idea. NOT TONIGHT!

I phoned a store in Colorado looking for couverture which said it carried Merkens chocolate, both coating and couverture. I questioned them very closely on the subject, never having heard of Merkens couverture before and was assured that yes, Merkens now did carry an inexpensive variety of couverture. Didn't order it and made all my Moab chocolate using the Ghirardelli chocolate chips which are basically couverture...I think. Alas! It was too hot when we left for Utah to bring any chocolate with us and we weren't going to be there long enough to use 11 pounds of anything. Plus mostly what I used chocolate for was coating toffee and such-like. No one complained.

Looks delicious and a late welcome to eGullet.

You post that you made these cookies but with NO PHOTO?????? Alas.

Had white sweet potatoes for lunch in my somewhat strange luncheon dish. Sweet potatoes and Brussels Sprouts. Ed eats them with a bottled Patak curry on them to hide the taste and I eat them with a lemon/olive oil dressing with sesame seeds because I like them that way. Ed bought the white potatoes by accident at a local supermarket last week. They did have purple skins. We found them less what? less full of taste I guess you could say. Blander. But very nice.

Add two more: James Beard's American Cookery and The Flavors of Bon Appetit vol 3. Value Village.

You use chocolate and coconut oil to make Magic Shell, the stuff you pour on ice cream to make that hard shell. Which doesn't preclude using it for a ganache I guess.

Nothing exciting or new: Enstrom copycat chocolate coated toffee, chocolate dipped ginger and orange peels, lollipops for the libraries, ice creams for neighbors who will help move our new-to-us freezer. Yay! Two freezers. Finally.

On the contrary, although that is what the manufacturers claim, the Consumer Report article states that many of the dishes have indeed exploded into 'sharp shards that go flying'. One consumer reported: 'Glass shards flew across the kitchen, including "multiple large glass fragments" and hundreds of "microscopic shards penetrated her face and eyes, causing serious injury and loss of vision"...'. p. 47, Consumer Reports, Jan 2011. Scary as h*ll. Since I first learned about the change in glass composition in the Pyrex and other similar dishes, I have been buying old second hand pieces. Still you have to be careful with dishes which are scratched.

Hmmm....I guess Denmark is a bit too far to go for a snack. Too bad. It all sounds wonderful. Particularly the chocolate-covered Marzipan with freeze-dried raspberries. That warrants asking for a recipe, please?

Consumer Reports this month (well, January 2011) has a very useful report on Pyrex: "Glass bakeware that shatters". There it is out in the open at last.

How to reply after being blown away by Chris's menu? We are serving the same thing we have served for 50 years. The family would not allow anything else: turkey with stuffing made by Ed, cranberry sauce (only I will eat it), ditto for Brussels Sprouts, mashed potatoes, green peas...I think I won't go on any longer.

Sugar and water. My candying mentor, andiesenji, taught me all I know. Which is way less than she knows. Andie's recipe for microwave candied citrus peel is in Recipegullet. There are several threads on candying peels, etc, on eGullet.

If you are overwhelmed by the amount you have to do, why not just slab your ganache, foot it, cut it into squares and go from there. Once I learned of that technique, that was it for me for the most part. Not to mention that my dexterity left my hands long ago...

I saw the name 'Dystopiandreamgirl' in the subject heading, and I knew, and I was right. Incredibly beautiful as always!

Thia was not an oil slick...this was a great pool. Over one cup. I really blew it. I did about four things incorrectly. Live and learn, learn, learn... There are a number of places to look for useful information. Kerry Beal's eG course, Confectionery 101, down in the "Toffee" section, Baking 911.com- about not having the butter separate out. There's another topic...English Toffee. They'll all give your tips on the butter aspect of the task and also so as the chocolate does not flake off the finished toffee.