02/01-02/10 - Class - Noncrystalline Sugar Confections

This week we moved beyond chocolate onto sugar work, noncrystalline sugar confections to be precise. It was actually pretty fun this week making candy, a whole lot better than working with chocolate. We made a number of various items this week, all fairly similar in concept (cooked sugar), the only variances being the ingredients and the degree to which the sugar is cooked (how soft/hard the product is).

On the first day we made three items. The first was chocolate taffy. It turned out pretty well, though I wasn't a fan of the taste. I don't think chocolate really goes well as taffy, I think a fruit flavor or something would have been much better. It tasted kinda like a tootsie roll.

The second item that we made was peanut brittle. It was pretty simple and also turned out pretty well. Though also I wasn't crazy about the taste; I guess I'm just not a peanut brittle person. The peanuts that were used were really salty so I feared for the product but it turned out pretty mellow. It was salty but balanced, not overpowering.

The final item on Monday were toffee drops. Again, came out fine but I didn't like the taste of them at all, though it's the fact that I just really don't like the taste of toffee to begin with. I guess it's just British thing.

On Tuesday our first recipe was for soft caramels. The product turned out okay, but they ended up being hard as opposed to soft. One group had made them earlier and the product was too soft, so the chef told us to cook our sugar to a higher temperature than what the recipe said, which in turn made hard caramels. They still tasted fine but the hard consistency was a bit off-putting.

Our final product was simple hard candy. Very easy, only three ingredients (2 kinds of sugar and water). It was fun pulling and working with the hot sugar. We colored ours a bright blue yet it was orange flavored-it was originally gonna be peppermint but I put a stop to that. We just made simple candies though they could have been shaped and whatnot while still hot if we had chosen to.

There was one more item that didn't end up working out, which were Leaf Croquants. They were made sorta like croissant dough, in that a layer of ground almonds and glucose were sandwiched by caramel, and then subsequently turned and folded several times to create many leaves of caramel and the filling. I think it would have tasted really good but there must have been something wrong with the recipe-it wasn't working for anyone so the chef told us to scrap it. Regardless, this week was a lot more fun than the previous classes, as I really didn't like doing chocolate work.