Confections! (2006-2012)

[YetiChocolates]

Some things I've been playing with, Red Wine; a chili infused piece I call Fire and Ice; Guinness and a version of a Hella (from Wyabau)

Hello Robert,

Your pieces are as always extremely beautiful, I love your decorating techniques. I was curious where you got the mold for your red wine chocolate and what's the gram weight of the pieces? I've been looking for that particular mold for awhile and thought I found it at chef rubber but when I got it it doesn't quite look the same as in the picture.

[minas6907]

Heres a few things I made recently. The first is a heart lollipop for a friends 1 year anniversary, and the second are the pillow mints from Grewelings new book. They are very very easy to make, just like pulling sugar, except its at room temp and you want them to crystallize! If anyone wants to make this recipe, I would encourage them not to pack the mints in confectioners sugar like instructed in the book. Instead, when youve assembled your candy with stripes, dust your hands with confectioners sugar and start pulling a rope and cutting your candies, adding more confectioners sugar if you need it. The reason I advise against packing them in sugar is because after a day they get all clumped up on the outside with sugar, and the candy itself really seems to be way over crystallized, to the point where you could rub outside of the candy off just by squeezing it. But from the same batch of candy I dusted the rope with confectioners sugar and figured that combined with the higher moisture content and lack of glucose would be sufficent to crystalize, and it did. The ones pictured below were not packed over night in sugar (those got trashed) These had a much more even crystallization and nice texture when bitten into. I look forward to seeing what you all make from the new book.

[RobertM]

Some things I've been playing with, Red Wine; a chili infused piece I call Fire and Ice; Guinness and a version of a Hella (from Wyabau)

Hello Robert,

Your pieces are as always extremely beautiful, I love your decorating techniques. I was curious where you got the mold for your red wine chocolate and what's the gram weight of the pieces? I've been looking for that particular mold for awhile and thought I found it at chef rubber but when I got it it doesn't quite look the same as in the picture.

Thank you for the kind compliment. I got this mold from Tomric. Let me look at my paperwork and get you the mold number....I will post here soon....

[sunshine-supernova]

for some reason, I'm terrified of the idea of pulling sugar - but on the other hand, I'm desperate to have a go for the first time.

I don't have a suitable work surface atm, but I'm hoping the stainless steel top being made for my bench will get me by (whilst not being ideal)

[heidih]

Sunshine - I only pulled sugar once as I am not a confectionary person but....it was really fun, I had no special surface and I made some roses and daisies for Mother's day. It is all just chemistry and a bit of artsy thrown in

[minas6907]

Dont be afraid to boil some sugar, when you do it, you'll love it! Like Heidih said, you dont need very much special equipment, if you have a silpat your pretty much there. Just go and dive in! Be sure you have gloves though, gloves are good.

[Darienne]

for some reason, I'm terrified of the idea of pulling sugar - but on the other hand, I'm desperate to have a go for the first time.

I don't have a suitable work surface atm, but I'm hoping the stainless steel top being made for my bench will get me by (whilst not being ideal)

I'd love to try pulling sugar. My confectionery partner, Barbara, and I have talked about doing that for a couple of years now, but somehow never get around to it. Possibly a bit of cowardice here. Ya think?

[minas6907]

Heres a few things I've done lately.

Orange Turkish Delight. I added corn syrup and cooked it a little different then the Turkish Delight formula using native starch in Grewelings new book specified. My only regret is obviously adding too much color. The orange flavor is nice, but more importantly, the candy has a much nicer texture. If you follow the recipe properly, it makes a candy that isn't very good in my opinion. It crystallizes after a day or so, and is not pleasant to eat, it loses that supple texture quickly. I've grown up with Turkish Delights, so I'm rather picky when it comes to them, theres basically only one brand I'll pick at the Arabic stores here. But I'm surprised with how nicely these turned out with the glucose added to them, its been a little over a week, and they have firmed up, but they still remain a nice soft gel. If anyone's interested I can post what I did different.

And next we have some Watermelon Salt Water Taffy I made, came out nicely, just want to see how the texture does in the next few days or so.

[Kerry Beal]

I'd be interested in what you did differently.

[Darienne]

If anyone's interested I can post what I did different.

Really no need to ask. Of course I am interested. Beautiful goodies, as usual, sir.

[Kerry Beal]

Over the past couple of days I've been making some barks for one of the wineries. Bubble Bark - wildberry and apple poprocks in milk chocolate and topped with a bubble pattern transfer sheet, Candy Cane Bark and Pink Himalayan Salt and Pink Peppercorn Bark.

[minas6907]

Ok, so heres what I did. Previously, my best Turkish Delight was made from a recipe you gave me, Kerry, from the book by Leon, that formula included corn syrup in it. They many other delight recipes I tried did not have corn syrup, those truthfully always turned out poorly. So when I did Leon's recipe, it gave me the best delight I had thus far, but it did lose the soft texture after a week. It wasnt too horrible, but still noticeable enough, when you squeezed it, it would stay squashed, it wouldnt spring back to shape.

So the corn syrup made the difference, and additionally I always wondered why in Grewelings book the Turkish Delight formula made with modified starch contained glucose, while his regular native starch formula did not. I've made his recipe for Turkish Delight with native starch enough to know it wasnt what I was looking for, it came out ok, but the outside seemed to crystallize very quickly, so when you ate them, there was an ever so slight crunchy feeling, and that got worse as the candies sat. In my personal opinion, I really hated that, even what I considered low quality lokum, none of them had that characteristic.

Anyways, the idea came to me to just see what the texture would be like if I added corn syrup to Grewelings recipe for native starch delights. I added half has much corn syrup as there was sugar. I didnt make the full recipe for delights as on page 351 of the new book, but divided everything by 3. So I had 16 oz sugar, and added 8 oz corn syrup. As for procedure, I got inspired by this video:

The guy boils his sugar syrup, then adds the starch slurry, then procedes to boil his candy the rest of the way. This is different then what Greweling has in both recipes, but Leon has the same method. So with Grewelings recipe for Native Starch Delights, I combined the starch with the given quantity of water, then boiled the sugar and water, along with the entire amount of cream of tartar listed in the recipe. I let that boil for a few minutes, turned off heat, stirred in starch slurry, back on low heat, and kept stirring and stirring. It gelled, and I just had to watch my heat the whole time. In the beginning of cooking the delights, I've found I can go at a higher heat, you just sort of have to eyeball it. Then as the candy thickens, I lower the heat slightly, I do this probably three or four times through cooking. Its sort of difficult to say when its done, the very best way I can describe it is (I'm using a silicone spatula btw) while stirring, I sort of see it all stir in one big blob. Haha, I dont know if that made sense, but it was like I didnt feel like I'm stirring a sticky liquid anymore, it felt more like one blob that I kept moving around the pot. I'd say from start to finish, I was probably stirring for 30-45 minutes, and that was a 1/3 recipe, so I assume it will be longer for the full recipe. Btw, I was using a 2 qt sauce pan.

Anyways, I was comapring the Grewelings formula to Leons, and I think the biggest difference between them is the amount of starch, Greweling uses less starch, and with the addition of corn syrup, it really did make the best delight I've had (home made that is, the very best came from abroad) After a few days the texture inmproved, they dry out a little bit and firm up. One week on they sort of have that distictive look of being dried out, the candy sort of contracting on itself, but still have a nice supple texture. When you squeeze them, they spring back into shape. I just finished them tonight, but I think tomorrow I may make a larger batch to keep for a longer time and see what the shelf life is on these, but so far these have lasted the longest with a desirable texture.

Sorry about the super long explaination, Turkish Delights have really seemed to be the most difficult candy to make. There are so many recipes I've tried, and many more I've come across and discarded because when you reduce down the proportions, they are all basically the same amounts of sugar and cornstarch, just different quantities given for different sized batches, so I've been able to weed though many recipes knowing they would produce the same exact candy.

Anywho, if anyone else wants to give this a try, I would love to see your results! Happy stirring!

[Kerry Beal]

Ok, so heres what I did. Previously, my best Turkish Delight was made from a recipe you gave me, Kerry, from the book by Leon, that formula included corn syrup in it. They many other delight recipes I tried did not have corn syrup, those truthfully always turned out poorly. So when I did Leon's recipe, it gave me the best delight I had thus far, but it did lose the soft texture after a week. It wasnt too horrible, but still noticeable enough, when you squeezed it, it would stay squashed, it wouldnt spring back to shape.

So the corn syrup made the difference, and additionally I always wondered why in Grewelings book the Turkish Delight formula made with modified starch contained glucose, while his regular native starch formula did not. I've made his recipe for Turkish Delight with native starch enough to know it wasnt what I was looking for, it came out ok, but the outside seemed to crystallize very quickly, so when you ate them, there was an ever so slight crunchy feeling, and that got worse as the candies sat. In my personal opinion, I really hated that, even what I considered low quality lokum, none of them had that characteristic.

Anyways, the idea came to me to just see what the texture would be like if I added corn syrup to Grewelings recipe for native starch delights. I added half has much corn syrup as there was sugar. I didnt make the full recipe for delights as on page 351 of the new book, but divided everything by 3. So I had 16 oz sugar, and added 8 oz corn syrup. As for procedure, I got inspired by this video:

The guy boils his sugar syrup, then adds the starch slurry, then procedes to boil his candy the rest of the way. This is different then what Greweling has in both recipes, but Leon has the same method. So with Grewelings recipe for Native Starch Delights, I combined the starch with the given quantity of water, then boiled the sugar and water, along with the entire amount of cream of tartar listed in the recipe. I let that boil for a few minutes, turned off heat, stirred in starch slurry, back on low heat, and kept stirring and stirring. It gelled, and I just had to watch my heat the whole time. In the beginning of cooking the delights, I've found I can go at a higher heat, you just sort of have to eyeball it. Then as the candy thickens, I lower the heat slightly, I do this probably three or four times through cooking. Its sort of difficult to say when its done, the very best way I can describe it is (I'm using a silicone spatula btw) while stirring, I sort of see it all stir in one big blob. Haha, I dont know if that made sense, but it was like I didnt feel like I'm stirring a sticky liquid anymore, it felt more like one blob that I kept moving around the pot. I'd say from start to finish, I was probably stirring for 30-45 minutes, and that was a 1/3 recipe, so I assume it will be longer for the full recipe. Btw, I was using a 2 qt sauce pan.

Anyways, I was comapring the Grewelings formula to Leons, and I think the biggest difference between them is the amount of starch, Greweling uses less starch, and with the addition of corn syrup, it really did make the best delight I've had (home made that is, the very best came from abroad) After a few days the texture inmproved, they dry out a little bit and firm up. One week on they sort of have that distictive look of being dried out, the candy sort of contracting on itself, but still have a nice supple texture. When you squeeze them, they spring back into shape. I just finished them tonight, but I think tomorrow I may make a larger batch to keep for a longer time and see what the shelf life is on these, but so far these have lasted the longest with a desirable texture.

Sorry about the super long explaination, Turkish Delights have really seemed to be the most difficult candy to make. There are so many recipes I've tried, and many more I've come across and discarded because when you reduce down the proportions, they are all basically the same amounts of sugar and cornstarch, just different quantities given for different sized batches, so I've been able to weed though many recipes knowing they would produce the same exact candy.

Anywho, if anyone else wants to give this a try, I would love to see your results! Happy stirring!

Interesting - wonder if you need both glucose and cream of tarter?

This sounds like a job for Thermomix! Is this from the newest greweling or the At Home?

[minas6907]

You know, I was wondering the same thing. I'm sort of betting right now that you don't. I added it because in Leon's recipe, he has both cream of tartar and glucose. I've made his recipe excluding the cream of tartar and did not notice any difference. And the recipe I was going off of was from his new book, its Turkish Delight using native starch. It truthfully doesn't matter which on you use though, this recipe has the exact same proportions as in the at home book, its just multiplied by 3 so it fits into a 12 inch frame. Just add half as much glucose as there is sugar.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

[sunshine-supernova]

I'm really backlogged up with work right now, so unfortunately no time to play as I bring a lot of what needs done home with me. I did make some macarons at the weekend....which is about as much as I've had time for.

I really want to play with pulled sugar. As soon as I clear this workload down a bit, I'm definately going to have a go - even if it turns out a disaster !

Minas - that salt water taffy is really pretty.

[Matthew Hayday]

I did a riff on Greweling's lemon mint ganache recipe to make key lime ganache centres for chocolates. I substituted key lime juice for the lemon juice, and the peel of 4 key limes for the lemon peel. I removed the finely chopped mint, and instead added 6 lime leaves to the cream during the infusion process. Then, I strained out the leaves and the peel after the infusion was complete.

The resulting ganache came out beautifully and I used some of it for centres for moulded chocolates (seen in the picture) and slabbed the rest for hand-dipped chocolates. The texture and flavour on the ganache were both excellent. The key lime flavour holds up well against the dark chocolate, and the lime leaves (which I normally use for Thai cooking) add a nice note of complexity.

[curls]

Matthew, they look great and sound delicious.

[Quesmoy]

Today was my first attempt at making toffee. It does not look very pretty, but I think it turned out pretty good considering I did not have a candy thermometer. For some reason all my candy thermometers have decided to stop working at the same time.

[Darienne]

The important question for many of us is: did it taste good?

[curls]

A few chocolates for Thanksgiving. Bourbon ganache, soft caramel, PBJs, and peanut butter cups. Pardon the smudges, truly not visible until I photographed them!

[minas6907]

Nice chocolates up there, all of you. Heres a bunch of taffies I did recently. It's Lemon, Peach, Strawberry, Raspberry, and Chocolate.

[minas6907]

Heres a new one I just tried, sort of an experiment. Blueberry Swirl Rock Candies.

[pastrygirl]

I've been making a variation of Greweling's peanut butter cups, that all my co-workers have been swooning over. I didn't want to fuss around with individual cups so I worked it into a bar confection. Bottom layer, a graham cracker crust made with GC crumbs, a little brown sugar, and a fair amount of brown butter. Mix in the robot coupe until liquified, then pour into the frame to set. Filling is the PB cup filling, with the optional candied peanuts, extra salt, and some crushed up potato chips for extra salty crunchiness. Top layer is 60% ganache, which I'm debating about making lighter or darker (but it is really hard to get constructive feedback when everyone's mouth is full). The whole thing is soft enough at room temp to cut on the guitar (once bottomed with more chocolate), which is a bonus. Served with torched soft marshmallow.

Edited November 23, 2012 by pastrygirl (log)

[Kerry Beal]

Sounds amazingly good!

[Beth Wilson]

I've been making a variation of Greweling's peanut butter cups, that all my co-workers have been swooning over. I didn't want to fuss around with individual cups so I worked it into a bar confection. Bottom layer, a graham cracker crust made with GC crumbs, a little brown sugar, and a fair amount of brown butter. Mix in the robot coupe until liquified, then pour into the frame to set. Filling is the PB cup filling, with the optional candied peanuts, extra salt, and some crushed up potato chips for extra salty crunchiness. Top layer is 60% ganache, which I'm debating about making lighter or darker (but it is really hard to get constructive feedback when everyone's mouth is full). The whole thing is soft enough at room temp to cut on the guitar (once bottomed with more chocolate), which is a bonus. Served with torched soft marshmallow.

This does sound Amazing! Any chance of one staying around long enough to take a photo and post it here. I am dying to see this confection as it seems to hold all of my favourite things in one great package! Yumm!