My Food Geek

Some foodgeek math for you:

Peanuts + popped popcorn + buttery caramel = crackerjackjef.
Divide the whole equation by 2 foodgeeks, you get zero.

I whipped up this quick batch of caramel corn with the intentions of having snacks for a few days, boy was I mistaken. You may as well just call this stuff crack, it’s that addictive. Five cups of popcorn slathered with caramel lasted a little under 12 hours I think, and that is only because I exercised restraint (and had to sleep a little bit).

The recipe, oddly enough, came from Making Artisan Chocolates. This recipe was marked easy, and it showed; the whole recipe took about as long as it took to pop the popcorn. I skipped the final chocolate step, piping thin chocolate stripes on the finished caramel corn, but it wasn’t missed. I think the book just added chocolate to stay on topic, but who knows, it could have been a welcome addition.

I don’t quite feel right about posting the recipe straight from the book. This book has more than enough good recipes in it to warrant the purchase and it’s cheap, too! (see above)

It has been a slow few weeks here at the foodgeek household. The CSA seems to be sending out the last of the winter vegetables, I’m making the same old food as always, and I’ve been slacking off on posting. I’m pretty sure this is all normal foodblogging news as it happens to the best of you out there.

To spark my interest, I bought a few goodies. Last week I got a huge box in the mail. In the box was my new Cuisinart ICE-50BC ice cream maker. This is a pretty big upgrade over my last machine, the ICE-20. The ICE-50BC doesn’t require prefreezing of the work bowl and can crank out batch after batch of ice cream. I’ve tested out the machine with a few flavors: matcha, hazelnut praline, and David Leibovitz’s roasted banana.

That brings me to yet another purchase, The Perfect Scoop. I figured I should support a fellow foodblogger since I would hope people would support me, too. The book is far better than I hoped and has all sorts of new recipes I’m eager to try out.

Switching gears, I purchased a large supply of chocolate from Chocosphere, 22lbs to be exact. I was tired of running over to Whole Foods and picking up their overprices block pieces, so I pulled the trigger on a chocolate stash of my own. In the almost as huge box as the ICE-50BC was a 10lb block of E.Guittard 35% milk chocolate, a 10lb block of E.Guittard High Sierra white chocolate, a 2lb block of Dagoba 35% organic milk chocolate, and a 2lb bag of Dagoba organic cocoa butter. This should hold me over for the better part of the year unless I go on a serious chocolate bender.

I bought one last thing to go along with all that chocolate, Andrew Shotts’ Making Artisan Chocolates. I’ve been looking for a quality candy book and I think this one fits the bill. Truffles, hand-dipped chocolates, and molded chocolates are the majority of the book. Shotts doesn’t go overboard on techniques and doesn’t stray too far from the topics at hand. The recipes are all rated by difficulty, which is a big help when you’re trying out something unfamiliar. I’ve already tackled a few recipes and hope to share a few of them with you soon.

Finally, I’d like to apologize to the UPS man. Thanks for hauling all that loot to my second story condo. If I have any goodies the next time you arrive, I’ll be sure to offer you some.

another try at making candies, this time I’m armed with a secret weapon!

The eater got me a very cool gift for Christmas that I really haven’t used all that much: The Chocovision Revolation 1. For those of you that aren’t super-foodies, the Revolation is a chocolate tempering machine. It is the little brother of the Revolation X3210 professional model, but don’t let that fool you, this little guy gets it done. It will melt up to two pounds of chocolate, temper it for you automatically, and keep your chocolate tempered for well over an hour or so.

When I temper chocolate by hand I never seem to have problems getting the chocolate tempered properly; my problems usually come from trying to use the tempered chocolate. Even with the best of setups I always seem to have problems dipping candies or filling molds or keeping all of the stray chocolate off of me. The Revolation probably takes a little bit of the art out chocolate making, but I’m not complaining.

Over the weekend I made several varieties of candies but I think I went a little overboard this time. I managed to come up with macadamia nut turtles, dark chocolate-matcha ganache truffles, white chocolate-coconut ganache truffles, and chocolate covered caramels. I really intended to make more, but the candy supply started to get out of hand.

Although I made too many plenty of candies, they did not turn out exactly how I expected. The chocolate I used to coat the candies is a bit on the bitter dark side. While this isn’t a bad thing, I don’t think it paired well with the matcha ganache or the macadamia nut turtles. The white chocolate ganache had all sorts of problems staying firm enough to coat. The real winner out of the entire batch was the caramels.

Since this was yet another chocolate making experiment and my ganaches didn’t work out as I intended, I’m going to forgo the recipes this time. After we manage to eat about all one hundred or so of these, I’ll try another batch and refine the recipe. Here’s a parting shot of all the candies in reserve:

For those who are looking for more on chocolates:

• David Lebovitz writes about his Paris chocolate adventures
• Chocolate Alchemy writes about making artisan chocolate in the Pacific NW
• Artisans Sweets writes about her boutique candies and pastries

This past weekend I decided to make some caramels. Candy making is not my forte but it is something that is really interesting to me. There’s something about the process of making candy that is, to me, unlike anything else that is done in the kitchen. There aren’t any real fancy candy making techniques here other than using a candy thermometer and a (homemade) candy form, but it was fun nonetheless. Getting to transform a few simple ingredients like palm sugar, honey and cream, into something as creamy and buttery as these palm sugar caramels is just a little bit special.

Palm sugar is quite an interesting ingredient. It looks a bit like brown sugar but comes in an almost solid block that needs to be broken apart; the variety I used was sold as a large solid disc. I originally tried to chop this into a fine powder with my food processor but it failed badly. Since I was going to boil the whole thing anyways, I just broke it into pieces with my hands and dissolved it in water. I didn’t see much of a problem with this method and everything came out fine in the end.

I adapted a recipe that I got while I was in culinary school. To be honest, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I made these candies only once and that was with supervision. It was a nice surprise to see these come out on my first try. I managed to make enough caramels that I have enough leftover to coat in chocolate (more about that in another post).

A few notes about this recipe:

• Boiling sugar is lava-hot. If you don’t want to get burned, don’t touch it while it’s cooking.
• Use a bigger pot than you think you will need, when you deglaze you will feel better that you did.
• Hot caramel + cold cream = sugar volcano - see above (big pot)
• Did I mention this sugar was going to be boiling?

Palm Sugar Caramel

17oz Palm Sugar
4.25oz Honey
14oz Cream

Put palm sugar and honey in a heavy-bottomed pot and cover with water.

Cook over high heat until the temperature reaches 160°C.

Remove from the heat and deglaze with the cream. Be careful when you do this it will bubble up and do its best volcano impression.

Cook mixture over high heat until the temperature reaches 122°C.

Remove from heat and pour into prepared form. I used a jelly roll pan with a homemade aluminum foil stopper lined with greased parchment paper.

Allow caramels to cool at room temperature. When they are cooled, turn them out of the pan and cut with an oiled knife.