Darienne
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Posts posted by Darienne
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I cannot believe it but I have grown accustomed to wearing an apron all the time, often with the bib hanging down. Shades of my dear departed Mother. Do we all turn into our Mothers?
One day in Moab, when we had packed almost everything to leave, I was making our last Chinese mini-feast and discovered...no apron!
So I fetched my sweater, turned it around and tied it around my waist. I felt much better. 
I have all sorts of aprons now, mostly from second hand stores. And then I have my special expensive 'Chocolate' apron. And my 'chocolate' t-shirt.
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You suggest perhaps going with something like: Great Lakes Confections, but indeed is that the location you would use? Would you use a more specific place name, like somewhere in the Great Lakes, like Bay City or Erie or Niagara Falls. Great Lakes is pretty darned huge for a place name.
It might help us to find a second word to go with a chosen first word, if you have one.
I can see the problem with a straight marshmallow designation. My confectionery partner and I have called our company...mythical as it is at this point...Cheers & Chocolates although we make much more than chocolates and have the same problem as you do with high humidity and high temperatures, all non-chocolate factors.
Good luck to you at any rate.
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Thanks. That's a fascinating website.
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It looks like a meringue that has been dusted with cocoa. They probably just put in a small amount of nut flour, my guess is that it's far less nut flour than used in macaroons.
Either they piped out the spikes and baked them, and then placed them on top the mousse, finally dusting with cocoa. Or, they piped it onto the mousse and used a torch or salamander to lightly cook it (like baked alaska) before dusting with cocoa.
I found a salamander online...but why would it be called that? It bears no resemblance to a salamander. Curious.
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This is the online recipe from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. The meringue is up in spikey bits on top of the pomegranate curd, but I think it would be the same thing.
Swiss Meringue
Ingredients
6 large egg whites
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
1. Lightly whisk egg whites and sugar together over simmering water until egg white mixture is hot to touch or a candy thermometer reads 140°F.
2. Pour hot whites into the bowl of a stand mixer or any large bowl if you’re going to mix by hand or use electric beaters. Beat until double in volume and thick and glossy, holding firm peaks that just curl at the tip. Quickly beat in vanilla extract.
3. Spoon evenly or pipe decoratively over tarts. Brown meringue with a kitchen or blow torch or place tarts on a baking sheet in a preheated 375 F oven for about 15 minutes until meringue is browned.
Omigod I got the photo up online for you.
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If you decide you want to make the hedgehog spikes out of Mexican paste, I have the Nicholas Lodge book out of the library...on ILL... I can send you a photo of his hedgehogs.
Mexican Paste is made from icing sugar, gum tragacanth, glucose and water. I can send the recipe.
I would warn you that Lodge's hedgehogs are incredibly labor intensive and you're probably better off if you can get your original recipe.
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Many thanks to you all for the fascinating information.
You could live forever and learn something new every day. -
Loquats are like bigger, sweeter kumquats, right? I vaguely remember sampling from a loquat tree in horticulture class in college.
There are also mandarin-quats being grown in I believe Southern CA that are a cross between a kumquat and a mandarin orange, about the size of an egg with edible rind like a kumquat. Not very common, and not in season now, but pretty cool if you ever come across them.
I shall be on the look-out for them. Thanks.
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Pretty much - there is no topping "one" in your list. After the cheesecake is baked and cooled, the top was just finished with walnuts and the drizzle of chocolate!
Thanks for the information.
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This is such an interesting topic. We have a loquat tree and I'm curious as to whether or not those would be any good candied, but I'm going to have to try the process mention for kumquats.
Do let me know how the rhubarb turns out and what recipe you used because our household loves rhubarb and I'm sure would thoroughly enjoy it candied. The moment it pops out of the ground we rush to the store to make the most out of rhubarb tart season.
As for the rhubarb, I will report back ...but it will be a good while before that happens.
I don't know loquats. Sounds a bit like kumquats. Do they taste anything alike? I don't know which process would be more useful to candy them. If you wanted slices, then the Wybauw process for sure. If not, then one of Andie's processes would be better perhaps.
Depends also on the seeds in the fruit...whether you eat them or not...if there are seeds.
Do write back about the loquat please.
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I might suggest some baking favorites
- fudge (the staple of tourists everywhere)
- caramel corn
Probably would stay away from strawberries, which will deteriorate in heat.
Thanks. Of course. Fudge! Where was I? And caramel corn. Methinks I slept. Thanks again.
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Thank you for the photo. I am speechless.
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My DH and I are the Mom and Dad now.
Still, the best thing I have come across lately is the chocolate covered toffee from Enstrom's in Grand Junction, CO. I had seen it written up in some book as the best toffee in the USA and as we were going past Junction, thought we should stop in and taste it. Keep in mind that I am not a toffee lover by any means, but I thought I had died and gone to toffee heaven.
I know you can get it online from Enstrom's. Truly delicious.
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I've made candied rhubarb from a recipe in Charlie Trotter's Vegetables. Without getting up and actually finding the book, I recall it involves slicing long strips with a peeler then simmering them in simple syrup followed by an oven drying process. You wind up with these beautiful translucent sticks of red and pink. CT stands them up and makes a tepee with them, highly photogenic. My rhubarb is a small nub in the dirt just waiting to bolt up, and when it does, I'm making some more candied rhubarb.
A candied rhubarb tepee. Who knew?
Thanks. I'll look up the CT book.
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The method is outlined, albeit incorrectly, in JP Wybauw's Fine Chocolates book, p. 70. The correct initial sugar syrup is 1000g Water + 600g Sugar (not vice-versa).
I think this is overkill for orange peels but hey, you can't argue with success.
Thank you. Very interesting. I have never tried any fruits in this fashion, but now I will for sure. To me there is something fascinating about the process.
Glad you pointed out the error in the formula. What a hoot!
(Actually having been a 'non-cook' cook for lo! these many decades, I am finding the entire field of endeavor fascinating. Especially the alchemy of taking basically water and sugar and a touch of something else and creating pure magic.)
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Correct, not even in a low crock pot. Here's a photo of the quartered & seeded kumquats - lovely and translucent:
Oooooh!
Beautiful! I will try that method. Please, each session of syrup of increasing sugared strength:
- how cool was it before pouring over the kumquats?
- how long did the kumquats sit each time?
They are radiant looking! I did mine whole and then had to cut them up to get out the seeds. However they pretty much all ended up in sauces and ice cream. Truthfully, I didn't even know they had such big seeds in them. Learn, learn, learn...
Thanks,
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I recently made some candied kumquats and used a progressively sweeter syrup over several days. Syrup is boiled then poured over the kumquat pieces - no boiling of the kumquats. It's possible that would work for rhubarb without destroying the cell walls.
Thanks John and Pastry Girl.
I did the kumquats the same way...try them in vanilla ice cream. So good. I bet the candied Rhubarb would have much the same effect.
I'll just wash the stuff, get the DH to slice them (my manual dexterity is blown), and then into the syrup they go.
Friend back home...east central Ontario...has a ring to it, doesn't it?...informs me that green things are just poking up a tiny bit. It's been a cold April and we are up several hundred feet from the environs.
Oh, John...you poured the syrup over the kumquat, but you didn't heat them at all? Not even on low in a crock pot? I did mine on low in my crock pot.
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Whenever I cook rhubarb for more than about a minute, it totally falls apart. If anyone knows how to make it not fall apart, I'm curious. You might end up with something more like jam, but rhubarb jam would not be a bad thing!
Good point. It appears some recipes talk about cutting the rhubarb into 5" long or so thin pieces and then slicing them into ribbons using a mandolin and then simply dipping them into a simple syrup which coats them and then they harden in the drying. I admit I haven't read the recipes very carefully...am getting ready to leave Moab...and was hoping for eG input. Sorry. Lazy and overtired at once.
And can't type either...
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Marshmallows for sure. You could swirl colours in right at the end to give them a rainbow effect and cover the top in non-pareils before it sets. Just cut them up in squares and bag them. Very low cost, easy and delicious!
I like, no I love, making marshmallows. And kids will love the rainbow effect. Good one. Thanks.
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If it stands still long enough, I will try to candy it, but never thought of rhubarb. A friend sent me a recipe for Candied Rhubarb this morning which I saved...it turned out a garbled mess...hate computers. Then I googled candied rhubarb and found a few recipes.
However, has anyone tried it?
We'll be home in Ontario in a week and a half. And we have several hundred year old patches of rhubarb on the farm.
(As we speak I am drying a batch of ginger to take me on the long journey home. And using the last of February's candied kumquats in a batch of Alton Brown's Seriously Vanilla ice cream. What did I ever do for fun
before Andie came into my life?) -
Sponge toffee would definitely work, brittles, marshmallows. I'd avoid the chocolate enrobed in summer in Ontario.
Thanks from one Ontarian to another.
BTW, Barbara and I made sponge toffee last summer and laughed so hard as the toffee climbed out of the prepared pan and onto the counter.
Oh no! Attack of the toffee monster!!! 
Perhaps a larger pan would help???? -
We'll make it there though heck should bar our way.
I'll help on the computer. We are in Ontario. Plus I have no contacts in the industry...unless you count Kerry Beal.
And, she said truthfully and modestly, I have no expertise in any area.
Time is not a problem for me.
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The chocolate might well melt. It could easily be 90 Fahrenheit with 90 degrees humidity. A killer.
The marshmallow cones sound like a possibility. Fun for the kids.
Pralines. I never know what kind of pralines anyone means. Please explain. Plus there are no low humidity days in Ontario in the summer. We could do them in a heavily A/C room if needed, but you can't get the humidity down very low when you are fighting that much heat and moisture.
Compounded chocolate??? Kids don't know the difference. I would hate to put our name on that, but it sure is one sensible idea....actually lots of adults don't either....
Barbara wants to do chocolate dipped strawberries. My problem is the 'last minute' part of that one.
What about sponge toffee?
Thanks to all so far...
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Confectionery partner, Barbara, and I have been asked to make some goodies for a local charity to sell to raise money.
To date I have made hundreds of hard tack lollies but that's about it.
Suggestions are welcome.
Easy, popular, stands up the best to heat and humidity and no electricity.
Thanks.
Edit: sorry, wrote that in too much of a hurry. I meant that I had already made lollies to sell. I've made other confections, but not in great quantities or to sell.
Also does peanut brittle sell in the summer?
Bonbon Storage
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Hooray for Desiderio! However, I imagine that you acquitted yourself very well also!
We just travelled across the continent...well almost
...from Utah to eastern Ontario bringing with us some couverture and bonbons. I put them in a plastic container with a container inside that container filled with ice each day. Not too cold...but not as hot as they would have gotten without the ice. All arrived home fine. 
(Which is not what happened in January going the other direction when the chocolate was not protected well enough. 
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Now tell how you did, Ruth...