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Cranberry Fondant Bonbons?


RuthWells

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I woke up this morning thinking about a molded chocolate Bon Bon filled with cranberry fondant. The first place to start is obviously to cook down some cranberries and blend some concentrated compote with the fondant, but I'm afraid I won't be able to get enough intense cranberry flavor into the fondant without wrecking the texture. Has anyone ever tried this? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

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Oh sometimes we can get  dark chocolate bonbons  with  lingon jelly inside, that is so good and  cranberries are similar in flavour so that should work. 

You bite down into the chocolate shell that shatters and you have lovely  fruit paté like jelly inside.  Yum..

 

I hope she is here on the  Christmas market.. I so need my bonbon fix.,

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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I'm wondering if a splash of Bogg's Cranberry Liqueur might be helpful.  I just dipped my finger in for a taste, and boy, does that twang from the cranberry come right out!

Just a thought...

-Andrea

 

A 'balanced diet' means chocolate in BOTH hands. :biggrin:

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What a good idea, Mjx.  I was thinking perhaps a drop of lemon or lime oil to bring out the pucker.  So, you just minced and then cooked the cranberries down before adding vodka & salt?

 

I coarsely chopped the cranberries, and cooked them with the vodka (about a tablespoon/bag) and salt, then when they'd reduced to nearly dry, I whirred through them with an immersion blender, to make the pieces smaller and more uniformly sized.

 

Citrus oils don't have any acidity, since they're extracted from the peels, and although I added lemon juice the first time, the second time (and after) I tried this, I added a tiny bit of citric acid to the berries instead, because even in small quantities, lemon tends to be quite assertive (however, you may want a definite lemon presence/I may have had an unusually fragrant lemon). I've no idea how much citric acid I added, (this was before I had my jeweller's scale), but I added a few crystals at a time, until I was satisfied with the berries' acidity.

 

The very first time I experimented with cranberries in fondant, I simply chopped up a whole lot of dried ones, added a little vodka and salt, and let that sit overnight, before adding it to the fondant, which works really well, too: their texture contrasts with that of the fondant more than so cooked, fresh berries.

Michaela, aka "Mjx"
Manager, eG Forums
mscioscia@egstaff.org

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  • 1 month later...

I am remiss in not reporting back on my cranberry bon bon experiments.  I had cranberries that had been steeping in vodka, so I drained them, cooked them down with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon, then cuisinarted the heck out of them.  I did not add any sugar.  I also did not take notes of proportions used, etc.  I blame an excess of holiday cheer.  The puree made a killer cranberry ganache when heated and mixed with El Rey's Caoba 41% milk chocolate.  I molded these in Cariaco 60.5% (El Rey, again) and they were sublimely tart and sweet, and perfectly balanced.  Of course, I'll never be able to replicate it again due to lack of scientific method....

 

The fondant experiment went as expected.  I used some previously made fondant and massaged/mixed some of the same cranberry puree into it, which resulted in a fabulously creamy tart and unexpected bon bon when cast again in Cariaco 60.5%.  However, while the fondant set up nicely when exposed to air in the molds, allowing for easy capping off, it almost liquidated within the finished bon bons, resulting in a lot of fondant dripping down chins.  Think cordial cherries, though not quite so liquid.  I may tinker with trying to make a stiffer fondant prior to adding the puree, but am unwilling to give up the oomph of the cranberry flavor for texture.  The solution may be to cast these babies in smaller, one-bite molds in the future in order to contain the fallout.

 

More experimenting to follow.......

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Ecole Chocolat has a recipe for white chocolate truffles with a cranberry filling that might interest you, using a combination of cooked and dried cranberries.  I made them but piped the ganache into molds rather than make truffles, and people liked them a lot.  The tartness of the berries cuts the sweetness of the white chocolate nicely.

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