Candy losers of the week

This past week I had two loser candies. One was Brown Sugar Penuche and the other was Sweet Buttermilk Candy. Both were risky because I haven't ever tasted either candy, but I had the ingredients.

The BS Penuche required hand beating after the cooking process. Hand beating is a pain in the arm. My cookbook says to hand beat with a wooden spoon and not with an electric mixer for a better textured candy. One of the fudges I made also required hand beating, but I used the mixer and it turned out. So I thought i would try the electric mixer again. This type of candy Penuche is really really thick and it kind of broke my mixer a little bit. I smelled electrical fire. So i tried with the hand beating and it was too difficult. Therefore, the candy solidifed before my eyes into a hunky block of brown sugar brick. bummer. It tasted ok. It had a pretty strong flavor.

The second failure of the week was Buttermilk candy. The book described the candy as "an unusual and somewhat crispy candy that looks and tastes like sweetened buttermilk" and i thought that sounded good and I had the ingredients. This candy is just a cup of buttermilk and two cups of sugar heated to the "soft ball" stage 234˙C. Then you throw in a tablespoon of butter and beat it by hand. In the end, I guess I didnt beat it long enought, because it just was too grainy.

I got some more ingredients tonight at the grocery store, so look forward to some good tooth-rotting candy in the future.

Success with English Toffee

Today I made english toffee. It worked out. I am on a roll with several successes now in my candy making career. The key is the thermometer, you must treat it like a friend and not an enemy.

English toffee starts out as 2 sticks of butter, slowly melted in a heavy pot.
- 1 cup of sugar is added and slowly heated( i've learned slow heating is totally important).
- Next add a little water and corn syrup - not sure why.
- Then heat the mixture slowly over medium low heat until the thermometer reads 300 ˚F. This is called the hard crack stage of candy.
- During the heating process, all the components are chemically reacting and it's cool to watch the sugary butter mixture change consistencies with the rising temperature. It's kind of like a lava lamp, you can watch the blobs of mixture turn into eachother while it cooks.

-After 300˚F, you remove the pot from the heat and add 3/4 c toasted almonds and let it cool to RT (room temp) on a cookie sheet. Then pour melted milk chocolate over the top.

Oh, snap it's good.

After a long hiatus...

I'm back to cooking.

Two weeks ago, I bought a book on Candy Making. I am going to be an expert in the intricate science of making candy. It's really actually difficult to make candy, so I've learned so far. A thermometer, the correct glassware, the exact mol to mol ratios of ingredients and perfect timing are needed.
I've made
- caramel twice - tasted right, wrong consistency.
- chocolate covered toffee over almonds - huge disaster - tasted good, looked bad, wrong consistency.
- pineapple fudge (no actual chocolate, just the consistency of fudge with pineapple flavor) this recipe turned out and tastes good. very very sugary
- and this week i produced a simple marshmello fudge (chocolate flavor) which worked.

So i guess I can make the fudges so far. The other candies require stopping cooking at the "soft ball" "hard ball" "firm ball" stage and i think these are ridiculous names.

I did it!

This past Monday, I successfully passed my Ph.D. defense. Here is my fabulous 2-tiered cake which I ordered for the celebration.
The bottom layer was lemon cake with strawberry filling and the top layer was chocolate cake with mocha filling.

I Ordered/Made This Food, Doesn't it look good?! Part 5

pesto
Originally uploaded by Rachaelrose.

Wow, huh!

This entree is couscous and broiled tuna steak with a tasty pesto from Flowers on the ave.

Cuisinart

I'm currently typing my thesis and staring at my computer all day makes me a little crazy. So, I decided that I'm like a food processor for science. I need to take hundreds of papers and grind them into one easy-to-read 25 page introduction.

Cook's Illustrated July & August Recipe:

This issue, I am going to attempt "Veggie Burgers Worth the Trouble." There are a million ingredients including brown lentils, bulgur wheat, leek, cremini mushroom, cashews(??) and Panko (japanese bread crumbs).

SeanB and I have this long standing debate about the veggie burgers at The Radical Rye on State Street in Madison and how they are the best in the world and nothing will ever compare to them. Two of the other good ho-made veggie burgers that I've had and that are excellent are at the Slip in Kirkland (you must be sitting outside at the time of course...P.S. this place also has a chicken sandwich with peanut butter!!) and at the Old(e) Post in Missoula, MT (had it last weekend). I hope this recipe lives up to the dream.

Check back in the comments for how they turned out...