Clockwise from foreground left - Marzipan Snowballs, plain with tempered dark, Crystallized Ginger rolled in Gingersnaps, plain topped with cocoa nibs, peppermint rolled in mint hot chocolate powder, plain. Marc and I have gone through many truffle travails the last two weeks, and even though I feared we would be defeated, we (Marc mostly) pressed on and prevailed. Among other things, my rather unpleasant flold (103 degree flu, sniffly cold), and the general speedy lunacy that is the holiday season, really threw a monkey wrench in our chocolate adventures. My fantasy, (oh…how naive) was that we’d make a few different flavors of truffles over a couple of days, and tra la la, have beautiful pictures for posting and tasty truffles to bestow well before Christmas. Hmmm…apparently there was another plan at work, and it included me having to take a back seat role for fear of delivering more than just chocolate (i.e., cooties) to our loved ones, and we finally finished the last batch today…December 30th. Truthfully, we did create some delicious chocolate treats, but they are just a little late. AND we have some good pictures, but they took an inordinate amount of doctoring on Marc’s part to be presentable. Making ganache (truffle filling) is easy, fun and incredibly versatile. If I had really known how much precision is necessary with tempering, I would have practiced and gotten through the learning curve some other time of the year, and just made what we knew worked, right before the holidays. Temper, Temper Before we get into truffle making in a general sense, there is a little background you should have on tempering chocolate. All chocolate bars you buy commercially are tempered. They have a clear glossy sheen, and snap crisply when you break them. Whenever you melt chocolate, it loses it’s temper. Meaning that if you just melted it, and then it hardened, the chocolate wouldn’t return to that crisp glossy state. Tempering chocolate is a precise chemical series of events. The effects of tempering come from the formation of beta crystals. When you melt tempered chocolate, you melt those beta crystals, and if you want to re-temper, you need to bring the chocolate up to a high enough temperature to melt completely, but not above 125, otherwise it’s scorched and can never be tempered again. Then you need to bring it down to a low, but still melted temperature to encourage the beta crystals to form. Then the key is reheating the chocolate to a particular 2 degree range in order not to let all other detrimental (gamma, alpha, etc.) crystals form, but still maintain beta crystals. Tricky, huh?  read more »

Happy Independence Day!! I don't know about you, but our 4th has been quiet and uneventful. Dave and I slept in, watched some tennis, and went for a walk. Weather permitting, we'll go check out the local fireworks after dinner - and if not, we're off to the movies! Now, I had been hoping to share our dinner with you today, but on their current schedule, my 7-hour maple baked beans won't be ready until next Tuesday... so I thought I would share this lovely dessert with you instead!  read more »

I LOVE marzipan. I inherited my intense love for marzipan from my maternal grandmother, we called Doe. On many special occasions, she bought a Princess Cake to celebrate. Princess cakes have white cake, and I think, a layer of raspberry jam, but in my little-kid mind, the cake and filling were [...]

The sun shone down on windy lane cottage on a beautiful summer day. All the flowers were dancing in the garden as a gentle breeze brushed across the tops of their heads and ruffled their curling leaves. Birds twittered in the tree tops and bees hummed as they flitted here and there, darting in and out amongst the dancing flowers.

Christabelle Woodland loved living in such a snug little place. Here she felt warm and she felt safe and she felt, well . . . happy. I wonder, she thought to herself, what it is that makes me feel this way. Where is it that I can find bliss? What is bliss? Where is joy? What is joy? These questions kept swirling around and around in her little fairy mind and so she set off to find out the answer amidst the to's and fro's of Windy Lane.  read more »

Christmas Cake Ingredients: 250 gm sugar 400 gm cooking butter 7 eggs 375 gm flour 500 gm mixed dry fruits 50 gm caramel color 120 ml brandy 120 ml rum For marzipan 200 gm almonds 2 egg whites 100 gm milk 200 gm sugar 1 drop almond essence For Royal Icing 200 gm icing sugar 200 gm stiff white eggs 1/2 tsp vanilla essence Method: Add all the ingredients together into a mixing bowl and blend well. Grease mold with butter and put cake mixture into mold. Heat the oven to 190 degree C and bake cake for 45 minutes. Make sure that the cake is well baked and de-mold and cool for 45 minutes. For the Marzipan, make an almond paste and add the egg whites, milk, sugar, essence, color and make leaves and flowers. Make the royal icing by mixing all ingredients and spread over the cake.  read more »

"Other things are just food. But chocolates chocolate." O ctober generally begins with a frenzy of activity coz DH's birthday is on the 3rd of October. From a week before I begin reading up books & browsing the net for cake recipes & ideas.  read more »

The loud pattering noise the rain made when it hit the blinds woke me up. For a second, I imagined we could be in the middle of a storm, like the ones my friend N. and I used to experience when she and I still lived in New Zealand, in the small drafty wooden house tucked away at the end of Breaker Bay road . I stretched from toe to head and yawned before noticing it was actually still dark outside. My watch indicated 7:15 am; Autumn was definitely on its way and soon enough, it would actually be dark even by 8 am. I felt tired. I turned on my left side and made myself comfortable by propping my head onto a second pillow. I hoped I could still get a few hours sleep, but then I started thinking about the day and the plan I had made. So instead, I decided to get up. “ It won’t be fun if it rains, will it?  read more »

and Banana Cream Pie - and Ajoblanco! So, let's get started shall we? The gougere recipe came from the New York Times magazine a couple of weeks ago, and I think it worked a bit better than the one I used the last time I made these. (Well of course it did, it's a Dorie recipe!) The trick with these is to let them dry in the oven for a few minutes after they're baked - so they are dry and crisp on the outside but tender inside. Choux paste is a wonderful thing - it can be baked into eclairs, cream puffs or gougeres, but it can also be fried as churros or beignets. It's not hard to make with a standing mixer - as long as you can use a piping bag. Actually, here - I can give you the secret on that right now. Put the tip in the bag and fold the bag down about half way, over your left hand (or right if you're a lefty.) Scoop about 2 cups of the paste into the bag, gather the top and and squeeze it down the tube like toothpaste - until it's near the of the tip. Get all the air out, and twist the top of the bag tightly. Grasp the bag at the top, where the twist is, and squeeze the bulb gently - using your other hand for guidance. Keep twisting the top and squeezing from that same spot as you go. As long as you apply the pressure to the bulb and keep it twisted, you shouldn't have any problems. Cool, huh?  read more »