Candy Continued

Whew! It's been a heckuva day. You know those little stars I posted earlier? In the molds?

Remember also what I said about soap, cleaning, keeping food and soap separate?

Thankfully, I taste tested one of those stars before using them in any capacity. When you are a soaper in the kitchen, you learn to do this quite often.

Well, I had thought that I hadn't used that mold for soap. Oh boy. Was I ever wrong. BLECH!! Oh, horrible little star! Why did you have to look so delicious?

As I pawed through my cupboards, I realised I also didn't have a nifty candy mold. Huh. Thought I did. Maybe I lent it out. Either way, I lined up my little cast of characters, all in a row - yummy middles waiting to be enrobed in chocolate:



We have salted caramel, chocolate cinnamon marzipan, anise marzipan, and peppermint marzipan. That's about all the dickens I felt getting up to for today.

Anyway, as I said, I didn't have a candy mold. Curious. So I decided to take a trip down to the nearest JoAnn and see what I could find.

I found nothing. They had some seasonal molds and cookie cutters, but nothing I wanted. So I picked up various craft supplies for starting on holiday gift-making, and went next door to the drugstore, since I needed some stuff there anyway.

And of course they had nothing. So I drove back up the hill to Fred Meyer - I've seen some Wilton stuff there.

NOTHING! They had nothing I needed! They had a couple Wilton molds, but they were far too big for chocolates. They had Easter cookie cutters. Sigh. But they had a few other things I needed for making a Christmas gift or two, so I gathered those up, and decided to buy a mini-muffin pan while I was there. I had an idea.

Also, I've always wanted to use these:




I wash my new pan, then line it.





So cute! I then melt a little milk chocolate and drip a bit into the bottoms of the cups - not even a quarter full. Then I drop a little ball of marzipan into each one.



I put a star shaped cookie cutter - new out of the box! Never used for soap! - onto some waxed paper and fill it with the leftover milk chocolate, just because. Mmm. Milky star.




Then, because I am reckless and have no refined tastes, I melt some of my 60% cocoa chips and cover the marzipan sitting in milk chocolate. I do it because gosh darn it, it feels good and I like chocolate!




I melt more milk chocolate, then drop a sticky sphere of caramel into it. I then cover that in more milk chocolate. I then stick the whole tray into the freezer for about five minutes - that caramel in particular just starts drooling away if I don't keep it cold.

Here is one of the two-toned candies:





Looks promising. CHOMP!





Not bad! Not the greatest, but not too darn bad! (Hey, that's what I'm all about, folks, unrefined, crude honesty. I'm a soaper, not a gourmand!) Now, what about that caramel stuff?





Oh, dear. Well, I don't about you, but I think this looks promising. CHOMP!





Oh, my. It is heaven in a mini-muffin cup. The caramel just drips out like a Caramilk bar. Oh! That's it! It's a caramilk cup! Except it's salty caramel. Who cares?! It's great!

So there you have it. Go forth and make your own good but not great candy! As long as you're having fun, it hardly matters.

CHOMP!

The OTHER Fun in the Kitchen

Yeah, you know what I'm getting at. That naughty thing we all so love, that powerful urge we try to resist, but just can't stop ourselves...

Baking. Or, as the case is today, candy making.

Mmm. Sweet, sweet, candy making.



I do sometimes like to take a little break from making soaps, clean up my area really well (while soap is clean, I don't like to add SOAPY flavour to my goodies!), and hit the pots.

You can see in the background last weeks finished project: jam and fruit butter! They all turned out so delicious. It was my first attempt and they turned out lovely. I will tie ribbons around these and give them out to family members at Christmastime.





Today I am attempting to make some lovely chocolates of assorted flavours. I have some anise oil, I have powdered cinnamon, coconut, coffee, green tea, scharffen berger cocoa, ground lavender, and some cookie cutters and ice cube molds. I also have a few handy bags of assorted Ghirardelli chips. I prefer Guittard, but Ghirardelli is still quite good. I really wanted to try the new Dagoba chocolate I saw recently at one of the nearby Town & Country Markets, but the one I stopped in at on the way home didn't have any.

I also grabbed a box of almond paste to make a marzipan. Mmmm.



I melted down some sugar to make a soft caramel. I slowly got it to a nice, rich amber colour, then added some heavy cream and sea salt. The mixture started bubbling up so quickly, I reached for my spoon and stupidly forgot to pull on an oven mitt. Folks, steam is hot and can burn. The entire side of my right hand is now stinging from that little mistake. I now return you to your regular grade 2 lessons.

The whole mixture is quite soft, and now that it has cooled some, I have made a rather large and yummy ball of caramel. Check it out!




Closer! See how shiny! You can even see me pointing the camera in it:





The extra-sharp and super-nerdy among you might even recognise the rather abstract and distorted reflection of the "OMG Pwnies!" shirt I'm wearing.

I'm letting my chocolate shapes set up, then I think I will slice them and embed them into the tops of some filled candy.





I'll keep you posted...