The Daring Baker's Challenge – Candy and another French lesson
It’s no secret that I am all in when it comes to any kind of sweets and the entire family are chocoholics so it was no wonder that this challenge was a winner in our household! I made a variety of filled white and dark chocolates (honey caramel and chili peppers, lime cream, brown sugar almond paste and Raspberry Pate de Fruit (the learning French part – if I keep doing these challenges soon I’ll be fluent) and a Raspberry Pate de Fruit.
The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!
The gracious hosts provided an excellent and very complete roadmap to making, tempering, dipping and molding the chocolates as well as some non-chocolate candy instructions here. What a wonderful reference for when the holidays come around! I followed their directions (using the seeding method of tempering) with a few additions of my own.
Printable Version
Son was leaving for college so I made his favorite first, white chocolate filled with white chocolate lime ganache:
12 ounces white chocolate
1/2 cup cream
2 limes zested and juiced (4 key limes if you can find them)
2 tablespoons butter (optional if you want a softer more liquid filling)
1 additional lime for garnish
Add all ingredients into a microwave safe bowl and heat for 1 minute, stir and then heat in 15 second increments until melted and smooth. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Temper the chocolate then I know this is probably awful, but I found it easier to fill the molds using a large plastic squeeze bottle. I’ve never been neat in the kitchen (as Husband, aka official cleaner upper will attest to) so this helps me a lot.
I used a silicone mini-muffin pan (there are no tiny bite eaters here) to make the molded chocolates. It worked perfectly and each candy popped out with ease.
Place in the fridge for 10-15 minutes until set. Then they popped right out.
Next came the Pate de Fruit. I followed the recipe given in the challenge for strawberry ones, but instead using raspberries and made one small addition. Lucky for me I’m not a professional and have no training, so it never bothers me to mess with tradition since I usually don’t know any better and sometimes it works, sometimes not. After seeing that several people had trouble with it setting, I cheated and added just a pinch of gelatine. Whether that had anything to do with it I’m not sure, but they came out with a great texture.
After they set I used a small cookie cutter to make the shapes.
Then it was time for the dark chocolate lovers (the other half of the family). I had a little more trouble tempering the dark due to the high temperatures here even with ac it was still 78 so it took a while to get the chocolate down to 80.
For some additional fillings I used some things I have made before honey caramel and honey almond paste to add to the lime ganache and Pate de Fruit. Using the same technique as the white chocolate I made the dark chocolate candy. Just for Husband was the honey caramel with red pepper flakes and sea salt topped with a little lime!
What great fun!
frugalfeeding
Oh wow wow wow, some of those photos are great! This sounds fairly simple. I really need to get some moulds for chocolates. Thanks so much for sharing. I really must make some chocolates soon – I keep seeing them all over wordpress and getting jealous.
simplycooking101
Thanks, it really is fun and much tastier and less expensive than the fancy boxed ones!
Katie
Your chocolates are just beautiful, and I’m impressed you found the time to make so many. I think adding a pinch of gelatin to the pate de fruit was a great idea, and I’ll definitely try that if I make the recipe!
MandyM
That lime white choc ganache sounds amazing, will have to try that one day!
You did a lovely selection of chocolates and I can only imagine how thrilled your household of chocolate lovers were 🙂
Thanks for taking part in the challenge, you did a wonderful job 🙂
Renata
Beautiful work! The lime one caught me! Gotta try this one out!
lisamichele
Love the white chocolate lime ganache and the raspberry filling you filled some with! Beautifully done! Thanks so much for taking part in our challenge this month!
Makey-Cakey
The white chocolate and lime ganache in particular sounds delicious, but all your photos and chocolates are fantastic!
Sweet T.
Wow, such great flavor combos! And all your candies looked beautiful.
T.
Julia
Beautiful chocolates!
slanecek
Very nice, I love your pate de fruits cute buttons! And the lime ones are so tempting!
Inma Miranda
LOVELY job, I love the lime cream, I am going to try it soon.
Jen
So beautiful!! The lime sounds FANTASTIC (I have a bit of an addiction problem with limes, though haha), I don’t even like white chocolate much but I think I’d love these.
Aimee@clevermuffin
Awesome post! I love the use of the silicon mini muffin pan to make the chocs in, I totally have to try that. I’m thinking it’d make a great xmas gift!
tinkerbelle86
love these!! they are fantastic. i made some character cupcakes at the weekend, would love to know your thoughts?
http://laughteriscatching.com/2011/08/27/to-your-posts-let-the-bake-off-begin/
Rufus' Food and Spirits Guide
That’s not cheating, it’s improvising. These are just amazing. Beautiful and such wonderful flavors. So impressive.