Darienne
-
Posts
7,218 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by Darienne
-
-
Thanks for the information Desiderio. I still think I will give it a try. Stubborn and I just want to.
Not all that stubborn in the end.
Finally gave in and bought some Cacao Barry Gianduja and it just arrived today. Delicious.
Omigod and I don't even like milk chocolate. I will have to hide it from myself or I'll never make anything from it...I'll simply eat it all!Now that I have fallen in love all over again...what should I make with it?
-
I'll often make some eggnog chocolates - so a dark chocolate cup with an eggnog filling, topped with white chocolate and some grated nutmeg.
Hi Kerry. Just to make sure...do you mean an eggnog cream filling?
My own plans are very unsophisticated. Besides the dipped ginger and orange peels, I am making turtles with two Moab friends.
Then I have committed to making hard candy lollies for the underprivileged children's party.
Thanks to eG members's help, I have started the lollipops and am holding off on the turtles for a couple more weeks.
-
Erm... I'm going in for a crown this Friday after a huge chunk of one of my molars fell off a couple weeks ago (I've got a temp filling right now). I'm in total denial about it being candy-related. I'm pretty sure it's because of those crunchy vegetables.
FOUR....
-
Wow!
That's three people with tooth injuries on candy. It might be interesting to see just how many folks have broken/damaged teeth on this list. 
Only kidding. I never thought of it as a work related accident, but I am sure our insurance covers only fire and theft. I'll just have to check. At least we can deduct it on the health part of our income taxes.
-
OUCH! I am sorry I hope you will feel better soon Lost on of my cap several time due my caramel addiction in the past
Thank you, kind ma'am.
Oh, that caramel.....
-
Thanks Kim.
The lollies are to be my contribution to a local attempt to provide a Christmas for folks in difficult times.I made the first ones today and had such fun! I love looking at the light through the colored candy. Never grow too old for some stuff.
-
I guess I would rather look foolish asking a question...than apologizing later for getting it wrong.
It's OK to start making hard candy lollipops for Christmas now, isn't it?
Thanks.
-
Then I'd probably do them about 2 weeks before. If they were totally enrobed, you could probably do them already.
Thank you.
-
Will they be totally enrobed?
Nope, the five pecans will be topped by a blob of caramel which will be covered by a dollop of chocolate.
-
Last week I tried Andie's recipe for candying orange peel in the microwave. DH, Ed helped me with the peel cutting process and into the microwave they went.
They didn't seem to be ‘quite’ done enough in the alloted cookings and so I cooked them a few extra times, as Andie suggests.
All went well, until a visitor came and I stopped paying strict attention to what I was doing. I forgot to check and stir them before the last cooking. All the water had evaporated and I was left with a hardened sticky mass and orange peels with the texture of car tires.
They tasted wonderful... but I broke an already damaged and much 'babied' bicuspid testing a piece and had to have emergency dental surgery the next day with a dentist I had never even met before. And I won't describe it. My jaw still aches...but I am getting much better.
I made a second batch of microwave candied orange peel this week. It turned out just fine, thank you.
-
Turtles are a favorite with everyone and so I thought I would make some to give away at Christmas time.
What I need to know is how long before December 22 or 23 I can safely make them. I'll use Kerry Beal's caramel recipe made with whipping cream and Guittard milk chocolate to top that. Then pack them in between sheets of waxed paper in air-tight containers.
A local lady is selling the most amazing Florida pecans to raise money for a local charity and I have fallen in love again with the pecan.
All advice welcomed.
-
Just saw this thread for the first time...
We actually had Brussels Sprouts for lunch. Life without them...aarrrgghhh I cannot imagine.
My favorite dish is simply boiled Sprouts mixed with boiled sweet potatoes, topped with Olive oil and Lemon juice dressing complete with chopped garlic and sesame seeds. My DH always tops his with a curry sauce of some kind or other, usually with peanuts in it.
I once thanked my Mother for introducing me to Brussels Sprouts when I was young. She said...You never ate them in MY house. Poor Mother.
-
Callebaut - callets
Valrhona - feves
Clulizel - grammes
E. Guittard - wafers
etc. etc. It's all part of their branding.
Not to forget Cacao Barry - pistoles
-
I am beginning to feel SOOOO much better after reading this thread. Thank you all.
I have had one disaster after another since working at this in Moab, but then my plan was to try all the basic candies I had never made, and which my confectionary partner, Barb, has been making since being a little girl at her Mother's knee yadda yadda.
I think it's called schadenfreude when you get pleasure from others' distress!
Not my nicer side.... -
Having just finished making 2000 pounds of "English toffee", I'll jump in here. My version is the crunchy, brittle type covered with dark chocolate and dry roasted chopped almonds.
In answer to what went wrong. Wrong size pan that you already figured out. You probably should have just halved the recipe. The crucial step is dissolving the sugar completely before starting the cook. I start out on low heat and let the sugar dissolve, then turn it up and stir the whole time. I cook it until I get a puff of smoke, stir it down and wait for the second puff. It is around 300 degrees. When it is poured out, I spread it with an offset spatula to the thickness I want. Some people don't touch it after pouring it, but that makes it too thick for me. I cover a sheet pan with the almonds, so that a very thick layer sticks to the back of the toffee. When the candy is just starting to cool, I throw a handful of callets on top and when they are shiny, I spread out and cover with more nuts. I don't want tempered chocolate on the toffee because when it contracts, it lifts off the toffee. If you want to dip completely in chocolate, pour out on parchment, score when cooling, break apart and dip when cool. You can roll in chopped nuts. You can also put raw nuts into the batch when cooking, but I prefer the other method-just my way of doing it.
Great post. I am going to do just that but with pecans. I have lots of pecans. We just can't get them like this back in the northeast.
Thanks, Chocolot.
-
As a rank beginner, I have had so many 'learning experiences' that it's hard to know which one to relate.
Still I guess the dumbest one was when I was making a peanut brittle and I had the syrup cooking on the stove. I had to take it to 300 F and there I was cooking it and cooking it and it wasn't getting anywhere near 300 degrees and then it started to burn and blacken and I finally realized that my thermometer was set on Celcius and not Fahrenheit, and I had this blackened mass stuck to my pot to wash out.
...but that's only one story...
-
Hello all,
No one has mentioned Astuces in their answers. I googled it and almost all of the listings were in French...or pointed me back to this topic.
OK. Please. What is an Astuce(s)?
Thanks. Always learning...learning....learning....
An 'astuce' is a clever way of doing something or solving a problem.
Thank you.
-
Hello all,
No one has mentioned Astuces in their answers. I googled it and almost all of the listings were in French...or pointed me back to this topic.
OK. Please. What is an Astuce(s)?
Thanks. Always learning...learning....learning....
-
Hi Everyone
I'm starting to make my holiday candy and last night I made English Toffee
well now it's a mass of sugar and alomonds with the consistency of brown sugar. Rena
Hi Rena,
I read your message and smiled broadly. I can't help you at all, but I can identify closely with your problem. My lovely Pecan Brittle is now sauce for ice cream or frozen yoghurt. Best of luck to you and Happy Holidays.
-
I would think that a recipe with cream was meant to be a chewy candy, aren't hard toffees usually just sugar, butter, and nuts?
There are a number of brittles with cream as an ingredient.
-
I would opt for Kerry's suggestion of turning this batch into ice-cream sauce, with that I do not think you can fail to get something tasty and useful out of it.
I think Fern has a good point about the altitude adjustment. I have no experience of altitude cooking but the emphasis always seems to be on the effect on boiling water temperatures. A caramel at high temperatures has very little water left in it so this must have some impact on the corrections. So if for example cooking oil heats at altitude to the same temperatures as at sea level then I would say the altitiude correction could have been the problem.
Next time could you double check doneness with the drop of caramel syrup in ice cold water method?
I admire your determination!!
Somehow I missed the ice cream sauce post from Kerry, but I think that's the one. It is so delicious and we have folks coming for lunch tomorrow. Thanks Kerry.
I think that you and Fern may well have some excellent ideas about the altitude and the obvious lack of water in the mixture as the thermometer climbs. I will try the drop in ice cold water next time for sure. So much to learn always and so many folks out there to teach it. I am so grateful.
-
I wonder if this correction for altitude remains valid as the target temperature gets higher and higher. My understanding of the physical chemistry is that an adjustment is necessary to compensate for the fact that water boils at a lower temperature as the altitude increases. Could it be that there are other processes occurring in the cooking candy that are not subject to the same correction and may weigh more heavily in the results when the target temp is farther away from the boiling point? I'm just speculating, though I'm sure there are food scientists who would have detailed answers. If I was significantly above sea level myself, I would research this more....
Fern
Interesting point. Out of my league at present seeing as my stay in this altitude is so recent and I am mathematically challenged.
To return to an earlier point....I did put a piece of the chewy stuff in the microwave for 2 30 second periods. It melted completely but that was all. I could retry the stuff for additional periods to see what happens. You can make brittle in a microwave very easily.
However, following an earlier thread in which I managed to cook caramels too long and they ended up crunchy and following instructions I managed to return them to caramel stage...could I do this with the chewy 'brittle' which, while chewy, is really just too tough to coat with chocolate.
I should stop all of this and follow some recipes properly. -
Kettle Chips Sea Salt and Pepper. Yummy goodness.
Ditto here. Couldn't resist posting. You can leave pretty much anything out and available to me...except for good potato chips. Big downfall.
-
Here is an interesting situation:
Ruth's recipe as printed on eG, thread 'Gobs of Pecans', gives the first temperature as 285*; the second after the addition of the butter is 270*. Her original recipe in Candymaking gives the two temperatures as 295* and then after the butter, 280*. I followed the 'Gobs of Pecan's temperatures. (Hey Ruth! We still adore you.
)So perhaps the first set would have been more appropriate. I still don't have those warning signals in my head. That will come with time. I hope.
Question: what about my idea of putting some in the microwave or oven or pot, reheating it? Is it too late because the pecans will burn? Or what? I guess I'll try it come hell or high water, even if I have to throw it all out.
Thanks.
(The editing was my trying and finally succeeding in using the italics mode)
Tim Hortons
in Ready to Eat
Posted
Just found this thread and could not resist writing. Tim Horton's is owned by an American company and isn't even 'Canadian' anymore.
I loathe their coffee and wonder why anyone eats their muffins at all. BUT they do have clean washrooms.