My hat is off to all artisanal cofectioners

Tags

candy, homemade, postaday2014

It is time for the annual making of the Fleur de Sel caramels. I have the recipe down pat; one cup of heavy cream, 5 tablespoons of butter, 1 teaspoon of Fleur de Sel salt, 1/4 cup of light corn syrup, 1/4 water, 1 1/2 of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. The heavy cream, salt and butter are brought to a boil and then taken off the heat while the sugar, corn syrup and water are brought to a boil and to the desired caramel color. The hot cream mixture is poured into the sugar mixture, it will roil up violently and this is when the vanilla is added, with a wooden spoon the mixture needs to be stirred until the caramel registers at 248F on a candy thermometer. This is always the tricky moment, a few seconds too soon or a few seconds too late and your caramel will be different: either perfect or too hard or too soft, like I said it is tricky; basically I don’t quite have the technique down pat.

This is why I say my hat is off to the artisanal chocolate and candy makers, it is hard work in a professional space, but even more challenging in the home because you might not have all of the proper equipment and for those who are starting their small businesses, it seems almost impossible to juggle your normal demands on top of new candy orders. I had made pizza for dinner and then I took my cooled off batch of caramels out to cut up into pieces, dip into Fleur de Sel and then wrapping each piece individually in foil-lined parchment paper. This part isn’t difficult just a little tedious, I am lucky that I don’t get tempted by the caramel because then the job would be even more challenging. lol. 😀

One batch of caramels yields about 50 to 60 pieces; I can just imagine how overwhelming it can be if you are lucky enough to have say 20 batches to make, at the home how would you figure out how to make the twenty batches, do you double up on the recipe and make two batches ten times or do you take the time to figure out how to bulk up the recipe, but that is a whole other ratio problem to tackle. I admire these entrepreneurs very much and I haven’t even gotten past the surface in terms of challenges.

I am happy making my small batches of whatever tickles my fancy; I don’t think that going beyond my small circle would give me more satisfaction. Often bigger doesn’t mean better.

Thoughts of an upcoming autumn season

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chicken stock, homemade, postaday2014, vegetables

One of the first things that brings the start of autumn season to mind is when I start thinking stock and soup and today I am going to be making two stock pots of chicken stock. One will be for the freezer and the other will be to make a Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, full of the cellophane noodles, cilantro, chives, mint, black mushrooms, bean sprouts and of course chicken; if I really wanted to go all out, I would add tiny shrimp and sliced omelette with perhaps a water chestnut or two. That is what is so nice about great chicken stock, it provides you with a canvas and you can add whatsoever you have on hand to add the wonderful flavors and textures that produces a masterpiece of a soup ready for you and your family to eat.

Today I did the usual steps to make chicken stock; I gathered the herbs, I cut up the vegetables and I decided to roast the chicken thighs for a bit before adding them to the pot. As you can see I chose to use fresh sage, thyme and oregano from my garden and I studded the onions with cloves, the bay leaves I had in my pantry, I peeled several cloves of garlic as well. Theoretically with all of these wonderful ingredients the chicken stock should be rich and flavorful in about four to six hours.

While I was puttering about in the kitchen, Jack was sitting next to the refrigerator reminding me that he was hungry; he is always hungry and that position of his, is pretty much how he spends much of his day, if he isn’t laying on my lap that is or sitting by the window surveying all who walk by, occasionally barking to remind everyone that he is watching and earning his keep.

Homemade Christmas presents

Tags

caramels, Christmas, gift giving, homemade, postaday2012, presents, sea salt

I ended up making three batches of caramels au Fleur de sel or caramels with sea salt. Why? I’ll tell you; the first batch came out fine, or so I thought, the color was good and the candy thermometer registered around 148 but when I took them out of the refrigerator they weren’t the soft, creamy consistency I was looking for; they had gone to the hard ball stage, which meant I let them get one or two degree’s too hot. The baby girl tried them and let me know that they tasted excellent but since they were destined for my hubby’s Christmas office presents, this was not acceptable.

Back to the drawing board I went. We had to go out shopping to replenish my heavy cream and sugar reserves and we went into T.J. Maxx before getting the cream and sugar because there were five things that we wanted to pick up for Christmas presents. Do you think that we emerged from T.J Maxx with just five items? No, we didn’t, it’s hard to go through a T.J. Maxx without saying ” oh, this is nice, oh this would be a good stocking stuffer, oh my sister would like this” you say that often enough your shopping cart gets full quickly and before you know it, you are spending far more than you had intended. No matter, more Christmas shopping was taken care of today so that is less shopping that would have been done closer to Christmas.

When we got back home, I made two new batches and hooray! They both came out the right color; the light golden caramel color and the right creamy consistency. The baby girl had to do her duty and taste this latest batch and it passed her high standards. My hubby and I spent quite some time together wrapping the caramels in parchment paper after I had cut them up into bite sized pieces and sprinkled them with Himalayan sea salt as a garnish. It took some time because there were so many. I hope that they will be a hit with his colleagues and their wives.

I’ll give away the hard candy caramels as gifts for the holidays as well, to my friends because they are really good with that salty hint that gets your taste buds toward the end, when the candy melts in your mouth. They have had the soft, creamy caramels before, so I’m sure that they won’t mind a change of pace in the consistency, they are still caramely good.