Fall from Glory

First, there was this:

Then, there was this:

And when I wasn't sure it could get any better there were these:

For vanilla-sea salt caramels in dark chocolate

So I decided to go really big and enter the California State Fair, and instead of entering two items, I figured I'd go for broke and enter three. All of which, of course, I wanted to be as fresh as possible so I waited until the day before the drop-off to make them. And so there was this:

Yep, two second places and a third place. And the most ironic part is, the third place entry won Best Of Show at the previous fair; the espresso-hazelnut truffle that placed second here placed first not once but twice at previous fairs!

The competition wasn't really that much stiffer at the state fair. The system of judging was different, but not necessarily harder. The problem was me: making three totally different products in a single day and expecting all of them to be cosmetically perfect is just plain stupid. Candy is time-consuming to make and chocolate is finicky to work with-- it can't be rushed, no matter how big a fair I enter. And sometimes I get impatient, and then I make tiny mistakes that no one else but me and the judge would notice, and then I don't win.

I would love to be able to say that I never make the same mistake twice, but I can't. Usually I have to make it a few times before I finally learn my lesson.  This isn't the first time I've made cosmetic mistakes on my candy, but I'm hoping that three non-blue ribbons, framed on the wall, will help me make sure it's the last.

Especially next summer, when I enter the state fair again, and WIN.

The Sweet Texture of Success

I've lost track of how many times I failed at this. I blogged about it. I searched endlessly for the perfect recipe. I bought a new thermometer. I asked questions of other bloggers who are clearly more skilled than I. And still, I couldn't get it right.

I was nearly ready to give up trying, but then another blogger was generous enough to give suggestions and wish me luck, and an old friend went on a hunt for a digital thermometer for me.  Back at home, she hovered over the thermometer with me while we held our breath, hoping the 27th time would be the charm. And it was.

I realize people have been making caramel for centuries without the aid of digital anything. I realize I probably didn't angle the analog thermometer into the mixture properly, or may not have read it carefully, as the lines and numbers are small and the margin for error is even smaller. But I don't really care, because I can make caramel now.


I said I CAN MAKE CARAMEL NOW! How exciting is THAT?



So what if the whole world knows I have to use a digital thermometer? To borrow a friend's explanation for anything complicated, "It's science." I've seen videos of master chocolatiers who use digital  sensors that don't get dipped into the chocolate, but instead are just aimed toward the chocolate and instantly read its  temperature. Now that, my friends, really is science.

It's not dirt! It's flecks of vanilla.

Eleven more degrees to go.

 The thermometer even beeps at me to tell me I'm almost there. Isn't she nice?

Many thanks to Shawnda of Confections of a Foodie Bride for her advice and encouragement!

Chocoholic

So I made chocolate.

No really, I did. I mean, I didn't hop off to Belize and harvest cacao pods by hand and dry the seeds in the sun or anything.  But I did take ordinary bars of dark chocolate and transform them into infused bites of deliciousness.

Michael Recchuiti's book, Chocolate Obsession,  which I've checked out from the library about 27 times, will be the death of me for certain. But it includes a recipe for earl grey tea-infused ganache, which sounds exactly like a chocolate truffle I had in Florence and haven't found anywhere else. Plus, there are about a thousand of his other recipes that are calling my name. So I got started.

I'd been scared of candy-making for a while, as I mentioned in my caramel-into-toffee post this past winter. But really, I've started to believe that candy-making is all about temperatures, and not much more. The ingredients are simple: in this case, chocolate, cream, sugar, butter, and tea. The problem is, it's easy to blast way past the desired temperature, and then the very small window of opportunity is gone. Or maybe it's just my problem, since I get impatient waiting around for the Perfect Temperature, and start doing other things. You know, multitasking. And then when I check on the chocolate, its temperature is sky high. Fortunately for me, chocolate-making is more forgiving than hard candy making, since all I have to do is wait a little while for it to cool down to The Right Temperature. Whereas with hard candy, once I've hit Hard Crack, I'm f*cked. (Oh wow. SO not what I meant.)

        The first batch came out well. Well enough to impress people, even. The ganache in the middle was the perfect consistency, and the tea infusion was just like the one I ate while prancing around in my new Italian leather boots and pretending I was a bona fide italiana under the shadow of Il Duomo... I had poured the ganache into a square baking dish, but had a hard time evening it out before it set, so the pieces I wound up with were of many sizes, shapes, and thicknesses. Some of the lopsidedness was masked by the tempered chocolate coating, but the bigger pieces were on the verge of being sickening.

Perfectionists hate imperfection. Which is why one of them invented chocolate molds. So for Round 2, I made a small batch of chili-spiced dark chocolate ganache and set it in molds that create perfect two-bite pieces. This flavor combination has been one of my favorites since "Chocolat" (if you are a teacher or parent, your kids can read about it here. Plus Robert Burleigh is a super-nice guy.). Recchiuti says to rap on the backside of the molds to release the chocolate once it has set. Evidently one can rap too hard, since I left nicks on the tops of my pieces from all the knife-rapping I did.  Note to self.

Molds are great. But it turns out that round pieces are hard to coat evenly since they have no edges. SO not perfect.

Now that I have the whole temperature-plus-perfect-size-and-shape thing down, I need to work on my decorating skills. Recchiuti suggests gold dust, which sounds like a recipe for A Huge Mess, along with microscopic drizzled lines of tempered chocolates, which sound like a recipe for It Looks Like a Three-Year-Old Made This. But then again, I was once afraid of the Perfect Temperature, and look at me now.

The square one on the right isn't quite dry. And I'm not sure what the swirly streaks are on the round and other squares-- cocoa butter rising to the top?

And by the way, Sur La Overpriced Table, it is unbelievably irritating that you sell candy thermometers that don't gauge below 100 degrees when you know perfectly well that tempering chocolate requires said chocolate to be at either 87 or 90 degrees. Crate and Barrel sells one for half your price that drops to a precarious 60 degrees, so now I own two candy thermometers. Which has turned out to be remarkably convenient.

Yes, I realize the SLT one is in the chocolate. That's because I'm not tempering it yet. Smarty pants.

Sweet Things Should Be Soft

A guy I dated said this more than once after I'd baked some sweet creation that was not to his liking.  While I disagree with the statement, and also find it the perfect metaphor for our difficult relationship (me= not so soft. Or is it me= not so sweet?), it happens to be true in one instance.

I had a hankering for caramels, and thought a little bag of hand-made caramels tied with pretty ribbon would make a great gift enclosure, so I looked in an old Fannie Farmer cookbook for a recipe.  And by old, I mean copyright 1937. The recipe seemed quite simple, calling for just 4 ingredients: granulated sugar, corn syrup, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. The directions said to boil the mixture a total of 3 times, never getting hotter than 244 degrees, which, according to my candy thermometer, is the "firm ball" stage. "Firm ball" seems to describe caramels pretty well, so I dove right in.

Chocolate-topped, pecan-crusted toffee.

Oooh, presents!

Part of the test for doneness, says this recipe, is to drop a small amount into cold water and see if it forms a soft ball (first boil/238 degrees) or a "decidedly firm ball" (last boil).  My mixture did form these balls, but not at the specified temperature.  No, mine formed the soft balls at maybe 225 degrees, and formed a hard-as-a-rock ball at 238 degrees. By 244 degrees, I had invented Caramel Life Savers. 

While I wound up with candy in gift bags anyway, I wonder what went wrong.  I actually followed directions this time, knowing that candy-making does not leave much room for improvisation. I found a new recipe today for salted caramels, and notice the ingredient list is much longer: 3 kinds of sugar (white, brown, and corn syrup). heavy cream, butter, vanilla, and sea salt.  Does the additional sugar help stave off the hard crack stage?  Does the butter? I admit I am totally confounded by the science behind this problem, and to add to the confusion, the new recipe calls for heating the mixture to 255 degrees!

Can anyone help with this?