Darienne

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.

Twice since returning home I have had troubles with the butter separating in my toffee. Now I have settled down and done the research properly I should have done after the first problem. Shame on me. However, I have over a cup of what looks like ghee from today's minor disaster. (The finished toffee tastes fine and I'll never tell.) What can I do with it? I have never used ghee before in non-Indian cooking. Can I use it in a non-exotic fashion, say substituting it completely or partly for butter in something or other? Thanks. And I hope I've learned my lesson.

Add 3 more from me. Hershey's 100 th Anniversary: 100 Years of Hershey's Favorites to add to my every growing collection of Hershey's and Nestle books although I have no idea why seeing as I never make anything from them, but then they are all 2nd hand and great fun to look through. Diana Kennedy. The Art of Mexican Cooking and Fany Gerson. My Sweet Mexico to add to my growing Hispanic/Latino/etc collection.

I ordered My Sweet Mexico the other day on a complete whim and then this morning found it listed on this thread and also on David Lebovitz's yearly round-up of cookbooks he thought were excellent. I was clever all round and didn't even know it.

I've been doing it for a long time now without problems...but then I am not the most sensitive palate in the place. Works for me.

It looks incredible. :wub: It just might be next on my list of things I must make.

OK. Ya got me. This I hate beyond reason. And this also my DH, Ed, hates beyond reason: Putting things away in the downstairs freezer in the compartments in which they belong. Hate, hate, hate. Just took a bunch of stuff down, and because this morning I was SOOO virtuous and did put stuff where it belonged, this afternoon I just shoved it in where I could get it to go easily. The best laid plans...

That's it for me. Time is everything. I resent it if I have left it too late. I love it when I have lots of time. Mostly my own doing. We eat dinner at noon and often I resent having to do any cooking in the morning when it seems that there are so many other things to do.