Gilded Nuts

[tedwin]

I'd like to prepare a recipe which calls for gilded hazelnuts. The instructions say to spray the toasted nuts with nonstick cooking spray then place on gold leaf and brush the gold onto the nut. Should I be looking for complete sheets of edible gold leaf or gold leaf flakes?

[baroness]

Is this a "trustworthy" recipe?

In my experience, metallic leaf sticks best to a tacky surface - not a nonstick one.

And you DO realize that most readily available leaf products are alloys, and NOT edible?

That being said, use whatever is edible and least expen$ive.

[tmriga]

If you want to save yourself some work, try an edible gold spray. There's an aerosol form in 23K gold from Charrier, and a much less expensive form by Luck's, which is probably made from gold petal dust.

Theresa

[JeanneCake]

It was always frustrating for me to work with applying gold leaf; the slightest exhale and oops!

This is a poor man's alternative: use an edible gold aerosol spray, made by Chefmaster (a truer gold than PME) or by PME. Both available through cake decorating distributors (such as Pfeil and Holing, Avalon Cake Deco, etc) and I think Williams Sonoma has some but I only say a white pearl when I was there last. Put the nuts on a parchment lined pan and spray with one hand while shaking the pan with the other so they roll around and you can apply the gold to as much surface area as possible. It smells like vanilla whenever I do this at work; everyone comments on it, strangely enough. Just don't get too close with the can, then the color beads up.

[pastrygirl]

I use luster dust.

[tedwin]

Thanks all!

Baroness - It's a Food Network recipe from a catering company, so, it's anyones guess if it's trustworthy. It does get high marks from those who have tried it. And yes, using NONSTICK cooking spray seems counter-intuitive but, then again, I've never heard of STICKY cooking spray.

tmriga, JeanneCake & pastrygirl - Using luster dust or gold spray does sound like a more sane approach. Thanks for the suggestions.

[DerekW]

It's been a while, but I remember using egg-white as the sizing/bonding medium when doing gold leafing. Real gold leaf is [or was] available in sheet form but not from most art-supply places; as baroness notes, beware alloys or look-a-likes.