For the past couple of days I have been experimenting with cookies made in springerle molds. I first discovered springerle molds in December when there was an article about them in a magazine. As soon as I saw a picture of the molds, I knew immediately that I had to have some.
Yesterday we went to Madison and stopped at Whole Foods to do a little shopping. Just walking around that store makes a person feel happy. The produce department looks like a work of art. They have a wide variety of cheeses and they usually have samples out so that you can try them. After that, it’s on to the pastries and breads. A couple of weeks ago we bought a blood orange vanilla cake that was really beautiful and tasted really good. This week the flourless chocolate cake caught my eye and I was debating whether or not to buy it when I decided that I would go home and make one myself. After all, I had just purchased a ten pound block of chocolate from Williams and Sonoma a few hours earlier and my mouth was watering for chocolate.
I’m pretty boring when it comes to chocolate. I am happy to stay in my little rut of eating 60% dark chocolate. Most other chocolates really don’t even tempt me at all. I can be around milk chocolate all day long and I not feel any desire to eat it, and the same goes for white chocolate. However, there are a few people around me who do not share my obsession with 60% chocolate so occasionally I do force myself to try some recipes that appeal to others.
A while ago I tried a recipe for blonde brownies and I have to say that it was a really good recipe and I have made it several times. The brownies have white chocolate and white chocolate chips in them. Usually the recipe calls for coconut but some people in my family are a little unsure about the coconut which we usually leave out. I was wanting to make something to send to my son in Belgium and since he did not get my chocoholic gene, I decided that I would make him blonde brownies. I decided to leave out the coconut but to add macadamia nuts.
Here in the midwest we are having a cold spell. For the last two days the schools have been closed because of severe temperatures and weather warnings. Last night it reached –22 degrees. So, when I was trying to decide what I should experiment with, a recipe for a dipped confection called “hot chocolates” caught my eye. This confection has a cinnamon marshmallow atop a dark chocolate ganache. It required curing overnight so I made it the other day and today I dipped them.
I am still having some difficulty in getting dipped chocolates to look neat and beautiful. However, I tried dipping some round chocolates and some square chocolates. I ran out of tempered semisweet chocolate and when I began to temper some more semisweet, I got thinking that I might prefer these dipped in milk chocolate instead. In the end, I think the milk chocolate ones taste the best. The milk chocolate also seemed to dip better too and I’m not sure if I need to adjust the temperature on my machine or what. I will have to do some more experimenting and reading on that.
Last week I decided to try making a butter ganache filling because they are supposed to last longer than a regular ganache. I looked through my book and decided to try making the lemon butter ganache. The only problem was that one of the ingredients was fondant. I have never made confectioner’s fondant before, in fact I had never even heard of it before. But I really wanted to try this recipe so I figured I would need to figure it all out.
So one day early last week I made the fondant. I was really nervous about it because it required agitating it at the end and I didn’t exactly know what to expect and didn’t know how to know if I was doing it correctly. But I decided I would just jump right in and see what happened. It actually went very smoothly. After I had poured it on the marble slab and agitated it for about 10 minutes, it began to get opaque and very thick. Then all of a sudden, it seemed like it turned into a rock. I was afraid I had ruined it. I knew it had to cure overnight so I was just hoping that it would soften up overnight. I decided it felt lumpy and so I massaged the lumps out of it and it seemed a better texture after that. I put it into a container and left it overnight. The next day Marshall sampled it and it was very smooth. So I was hopeful that it turned out the way it was supposed to.
Chocolate curls are such a fun thing and I have thought that they would be fun to put on top of a cake. So I watched a video on how to make them and set about to do it on my own. I made a cinnamon ganache chocolate cake to put them on and we really enjoyed it. I like my chocolate curls. In fact, I was having so much fun making them that I made way too many and so now I have lots extra to do something else with. Hmm….now what could I make?
Since it is a new year, I thought that I should make something new, unlike anything I have ever tried before. What I decided on was Madeleine cookies. Madeleines are something that I have admired for a long time and had a desire to try but never have. Once I watched a Julia Childs video about making the darling little things, but still I never ventured out to do it. The biggest thing stopping me was that I didn’t have a pan. I have looked a few times but could never decide whether I wanted mini madeleines or regular madeleines. I also did not know if I should get a nonstick or regular pan. Decisions, decisions. . . and that is why I never bought one.