Saturday, August 27, 2011

Daring Bakers' - Candy Making!

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I'm back to the Daring Bakers! I missed last month's challenge due to getting settled in the new house, and I almost didn't think I would make this one on time, but here it is!

For my chocolate candy, I opted to go with a simple Irish Cream Truffle. What better way to sneak some Irish Cream in to my coworkers than with a delightful chunk of chocolate and sugar, er truffle, first thing in the morning. It seemed to go over well since the empty plate was returned to my cube by about 10. I modified the recipe slightly based on the chocolate that I had in the house. Next time I might try using all white chocolate for the top layer to get a little more contrast between the layers and in flavor.


For my second recipe, I went with the Strawberry Pate de Fruit. After reading comments from other bakers about how long it took to get to the required temperatures, I decided to get comfortable and call the parents while continuously stirring.

After getting to the 140 degrees in the first step, I called my dad to chat while I got up to 200 degrees. He answered by asking, "What did you break now?". To be expected since my dad has been fielding calls of "How do I fix X?" for the past couple of months. Home ownership has taught me that I'm pretty much useless at being handy.

Anyways, we chatted while I stirred, and stirred, and stirred some more. While the recipe itself was straightforward and simple, I drove myself crazy watching the temperature slowly crawl up. And then drop by 5 degrees. And then go up a few degrees. And then drop 3 degrees. My dad is a talker and has no chatting endlessly. But I even lost him before I could get up to 200 degrees.
An hour and a half later, I finally got up to the 225 degrees and was able to pour it and call it a night.


For all that effort, I actually really liked the final product. I cut the pieces and rolled them in sugar and couldn't stop eating them. I feel like it's pretty darn healthy though, and would even go so far as to call it a serving of fruit. I mean it's just pureed strawberries and a little(ish) amount of sugar. Clearly healthy.


So candy making was fun, but not necessarily something I would keep making. I'm more of a butter and sugar girl, and there wasn't much butter going on in any of these.

Until next month's challenge, I've got plenty to do around the house. I've discovered that my parents are way better at home ownership than I am. But I'm learning, one mistake at a time!

3 comments:

  1. Your paté de fruit turned out beautifully! I'm also a big fan of Irish cream. I'd have Bailey's on my cereal in the morning if it wouldn't be frowned upon when I arrived at work a little merry :D
    Thanks for taking part in the challenge, you did a great job :)

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  2. Those strawberry beauties look ridiculously good. I've had this in my Epicurious recipe box for ages: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cranberry-Pear-Fruit-Jellies-231009

    Is it the same kind of thing?

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  3. These look delicious! Way worth the effort!

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