HOT COCOA MACARONS FOR VALENTINE'S DAY


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Might I suggest for your Valentine a dozen Hot Cocoa Macarons… filled with spicy chili cinnamon chocolate ganache. OOO… La, la! 1 dozen, boxed and tied with a bow, $25. Available for pickup in Riverside California. Orders must be placed by Wednesday February 12. To order, email me: joanna@fiddleheadkitchen.com and put VALENTINE’S DAY in the title. If you have any questions, please feel free to email as well.

MARSHMALLOWS... YOU KNOW YOU LOVE 'EM!


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I know it’s Thanksgiving week, and I do love Thanksgiving but I’ve been listening to Christmas music for the past week… ok maybe off and on it’s more like two weeks. Needless to say, I’m feeling rather Christmasy. So, peppermint marshmallows instead of turkey, after all, come Friday, Christmas will be in full swing.

Peppermint Vanilla Marshmallows

3 packets of gelatin, unflavored plus ½ cup of water

1 cup light corn syrup

1 ½ cups sugar

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup water (this goes with the corn syrup, sugar and salt)

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Lots of confectioners sugar for dusting, this is sticky stuff!

Mix the gelatin and water together in the bowl of a stand mixer. You’ll need the whisk attachment later, so go ahead and pop that on there.

Combine the corn syrup, sugar, salt and water in a small but deep sauce pan over medium heat. Don’t stir, just keep an eye on it until the temperature reaches 240 degrees on a candy thermometer. As soon as it does, take it off the heat.

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With the whisk attachment in place, and the mixer on a medium-low speed, slowly pour the hot sugar syrup into the bowl with the gelatin. Once all the syrup in, turn the speed to high and let it go until the mixture is really thick. Takes about 12 minutes or so. During the last 2 minutes, add the vanilla and peppermint extracts, letting them mix in, then add a little red food coloring. Just eyeball it until it’s the color you like. I went for pale pink.

Using a sifter, dust an 8 x 12 inch pan with confectioners sugar… lots of sugar, make it snow! Then carefully pour the marshmallow into the pan and, just as generously, dust the top with more confectioners sugar. Leave it to sit, uncovered, on the counter to dry out for 7 or 8 hours… basically all day or over night depending on when you make them.

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Using a spatula to loosen the sides, carefully transfer the now set marshmallow block onto a cutting board. Keep dusting your knife with confectioners sugar as you cut the marshmallows into cubes or blocks. Toss all the marshmallows with more powdered sugar to keep them from sticking to everything and each other.

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You’ll have a lot of marshmallows, of course the exact number will depend on the size you cut them, but never fear, they freeze really well in a zip lock freezer bag. You’ll have peppermint marshmallows on hand for hot chocolate all throughout the holiday season. What are you waiting for? Go make marshmallows, it’s fun, I promise.

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NOT A SUCCESS... NOT QUITE AN EPIC FAILURE. ADVENTURES IN RECIPE DEVELOPMENT


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All ideas aren't necessarily good ones. Well, in this case that's not entirely true. I do think a rich, chocolatey brownie spiked with some chili heat is a good idea, just not this rendition. Alas, it was my bright idea when I came across the Guajillo Chili chocolate you see here (love the packaging, cute!). I had used the plain version of this brand and type of chocolate once before in class on a day that we made a particularly terrible mole. True story, it was not good, and no amount of tweaking we did improved it. There was a flaw in the recipe somewhere. That's the point of testing in recipe development. Very rarely are you going to knock it out of the park on the first version. So it went with this Guajillo Chili chocolate brownie fail.

Let's start with the chocolate tasting. This is some seriously sugar-grainy chocolate that reminded me of Freddo Frog chocolate my sister brought back from Australia. We'll just say that was a long time ago, and perhaps Freddo has changed. I do remember Freddo, in all his cute molded chocolate frogginess, being both sweeter and grainier in texture than say, a Hershey bar. The heat in the Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili is decent if you eat a piece of it, it just didn't seem to survive once it was melted along with unsalted butter. I tasted the batter and noticed the lack of heat, and added some cayenne pepper, but not enough I would later discover.

Decreasing the amount of sugar in my "regular" brownie recipe was a must to account for the additional sugar in the chocolate. I should have also ditched one of the 3 eggs I normally use because the texture was just odd—not moist and chewy, but rather dense though not heavy. I know, how contradictory does that sound?! It was kind of like a souffle-meets-molten chocolate cake if both are slightly over-baked, you follow me? Just trust me, it was not the texture anyone is looking for in a brownie, except maybe someone who likes a cakeier brownie... you know, crazy people.

In the end, the chocolate taste was good, but the overall color was quite a bit lighter than my usual brownie. I'm still a little amazed that the chili, even the cayenne, didn't come through at all. By the way, that's a little Maldon Salt on top of the brownies, in case you were wondering. Back to (almost) square one I go. It's a challenge now to nail this chili-heat spiked brownie, but that's kind of the fun part, and I'll be approaching it from a bit of a different angle next time. Stay tuned.

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