Holiday Party Sugar Confections: Caramel Popcorn, Homemade Butterfingers, Hazelnut and Seed Brittle, Dried Lime Truffles, Cashew Caramels, and Spiced Saltine Brittle
Tom and I went on a trip to Asia with my parents over Thanksgiving and we returned to DC only twelve days before our holiday party. Given the compressed time period we had to prepare and the additional handicap of severe jet lag, getting everything ready for the party was a challenge. This was actually the first year that we didn't have time to get a Christmas tree. But in the end, I was happy with the menu we managed to put together. I'll write a few posts about the food from the party; this one is about candies and sugar confections.
I usually (maybe always?) serve some sort of caramel corn at the party -- sometimes loose, and sometimes in the form of popcorn balls. This year I tried the "Old-Fashioned Caramel Corn" recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction (it's identical to the "Grandma's Caramel Corn" recipe on Sally's website). Making this popcorn is super easy and doesn't even require a candy thermometer. But even without any bells or whistles -- the only ingredients are popcorn, brown sugar, corn syrup, butter, cream of tartar, salt, and baking soda -- the end result is absolutely delicious. The popcorn was crisp and sweet and delightful. As a bonus, Sally says it stays fresh for two weeks; I made mine a week in advance and stored it in Ziploc bags. I will mention that as I was making the popcorn I thought I didn't have enough caramel, because it wasn't enough to coat all of the popcorn. But then I realized that in the photos in the cookbook and on Sally's website, her popcorn is not completely coated with caramel either. You can see some white bare spots on my caramel corn in the photo below.
I also made the "Peanut Butter Buddies" from the Theo Chocolate cookbook for the party; I had considered making them for Halloween but ran out of time. These are essentially homemade Butterfinger candy bars, which is an item I never imagined that you could make at home. But you absolutely can!
I really like Butterfingers, but if you asked me to describe what the heck is in a Butterfinger center, I would have to say that I have no idea, except that it includes peanut butter. I was surprised at how straightforward the filling recipe is for the Theo Chocolate version. You cook sugar, water, and corn syrup to 305 degrees and add a warm mixture of peanut butter and salt. The resulting mixture begins to set very quickly, and even though I immediately scraped it into a parchment-lined pan after folding in the peanut butter, it was setting up so fast that I couldn't smooth it out before it hardened. I immediately scored the candy and let it sit at room temperature for the better part of a day. When I tried to cut it into squares along the score marks, I ran into problems with lots of pieces crumbling and breaking apart, especially around the edges. The photo below shows how I ended up with pieces of candy that were all different sizes and heights (if the tops of the pieces weren't level, I cut or shaved them down so that they weould be smoother for dipping). What isn't included in the photo is the substantial pile of small candy pieces and crumbs that I ended up with; they were unsuitable for dipping and I saved them for a project that I'll discuss in a future post.
I dipped the candy centers into tempered Cacao Barry 38% Lactée Supérieure milk chocolate. These little chocolates were freakin' delicious. The centers really did taste just like the center of a real Butterfinger, although the texture was more dense and less flaky. I could eat an awful lot of these peanut butter buddies, and I definitely hope to make them again.
I made two recipes from Helen Goh that I saw an article in The Guardian: "Hazelnut and Seed Brittle"and "Dried Lime Truffles with Honey and Salt." While nut brittle is usually pretty straightforward, Goh's recipe is definitely an Ottolengi-fied version that veers into the range of savory -- the brittle is topped with hazelnuts, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, and coriander seeds. I was planning to make the recipe as written, but then I tasted some of the coriander and decided that I just didn't want to go that route. Instead, I kept my brittle in the sweet category by using only sesame seeds and hazelnuts.
I made the brittle by cooking water, brown sugar, and granulated sugar to 300 degrees; adding vanilla and baking soda; pouring the mixture onto a parchment-lined tray; letting it cool; spreading on melted dark chocolate (I used Cacao Barry extra-bitter 64% Guayaquil); and sprinkling on toasted sesame seeds and chopped hazelnuts. I let the chocolate set at room temperature and then broke up the brittle into pieces. I did encounter an odd problem where when I broke up the toffee, the chocolate layer -- which was completely set -- did not appear to be solidly affixed to the toffee. In numerous instances, the chocolate and the toffee didn't break in the same place, and the chocolate sheared off (taking the hazelnuts and sesame seeds with it), leaving naked toffee beneath. Also, a fair number of hazelnuts fell off -- in the future, I would chop the hazelnuts into slightly smaller pieces. But the brittle was delicious, and nicely crisp without being too hard.
The one candy on this list that I wouldn't make again is Goh's dried lime truffles. I had never used dried limes before, and the flavor is really out there. I had naïvely assumed that they would taste similar to fresh limes -- and that the end product wouldn't be too far off from a Godiva key lime truffle -- but I was dead wrong.
Persian dried limes are not just dried -- they are boiled in brine first. To make the ganache for the truffle centers, I busted open a few of the rock-hard limes with a mortar and pestle (the inside of the fruit is black -- if you've never seen dried limes before, there is a nice photo accompanying this article where Yotam Ottolenghi talks about them), and added them to some heavy cream, along with half a vanilla bean, honey, and sugar. I brought the cream to a simmer and poured it through a sieve over some dark chocolate. I added salt and whisked the ganache until it was smooth; let it cool at room temperature and then chilled it until firm; used a scoop to portion out the centers; chilled the centers again; smoothed out the centers by rolling them between my palms; and put them back in the fridge. Then I coated the chilled centers in melted dark chocolate (not tempered) and rolled each truffle in chopped pistachios.
While the truffles looked terrific, I did not like the way they tasted. I can't even describe the flavor -- the first thought that popped into my head when I tried one was "exotic" and "foreign," but not in a good way. The flavor wasn't bright and citrusy so much as it was as it was sour and salty, with a finish that lingered. The lime flavor was surprisingly strong, given that their flavor is merely steeped into the cream in the centers. But apparently our party guests were not big fans either, because I had quite a few left over at the end of the evening. I think that dried lime is just an acquired taste. I'm sure there are folks out there who think the flavor of these truffles is something quite special, but I am not one of them.
Caramels also usually make an appearance at our holiday party and this year I made Samantha Seneviratne's "Salted Cashew Caramels" from The New Sugar & Spice. These caramels are made from sugar, golden syrup, water, heavy cream, butter, salted cashews, cinnamon, and salt. They had the absolute perfect consistency. They were easy to cut and maintained their perfectly sharp corners, even at room temperature. (The recipe notes that the caramels keep their shape best in the fridge, but I found that they were too difficult to chew when cold, and that keeping them chilled provided no marginal benefit for shape retention.) The caramel was chewy but not difficult to eat, and I thought that the addition of cinnamon was terrific -- it was just the right level of spice. I would absolutely make these caramels again. And again.
Finally, I made some "Spiced Dark Chocolate-Cherry Saltine Toffee" from Garden & Gun. At our office Halloween party, a colleague brought some saltine toffee that was positively addictive and eating it made me wonder why I've never made saltine toffee before. So when I saw a recipe for saltine toffee that included dried tart cherries and cayenne, it seemed like it would be great for the holiday party. The recipe is easy. You just bring butter, brown sugar, and cayenne to a boil, cook the mixture for three minutes, and pour it over a layer of saltine crackers laid out on a baking sheet. You bake the saltines briefly; spread on dark chocolate that has been melted with butter and freshly ground black pepper; and sprinkle on chopped pecans, dried cherries, and flake salt. I put the toffee in the fridge to harden before breaking it up into pieces.
I absolutely loved this toffee. The heat from the cayenne was distinctive without being too spicy. And all of the components work so well together -- the crunchy-crisp cracker, the rich toffee, the bittersweet chocolate, the crunchy pecans, and the chewy cherries. The salt makes all of the flavors pop. If I have one complaint, it's that most of the cherries fell off when I broke up the toffee. In the future, I would probably chop the cherries into pieces so that they might have a better chance of staying attached to the chocolate (I used dried cherries from nuts.com that are particularly big and plump). But this is a great dessert that comes together quickly, and it's rich, so a little goes a long way.
That's it for the list of holiday party candies and confections -- I would say that they were all hits with our party guests except for the dried lime truffles. My personal favorites were the peanut butter buddies and cashew caramels, but I thought this was a pretty strong lineup overall.
Recipes:
I usually (maybe always?) serve some sort of caramel corn at the party -- sometimes loose, and sometimes in the form of popcorn balls. This year I tried the "Old-Fashioned Caramel Corn" recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction (it's identical to the "Grandma's Caramel Corn" recipe on Sally's website). Making this popcorn is super easy and doesn't even require a candy thermometer. But even without any bells or whistles -- the only ingredients are popcorn, brown sugar, corn syrup, butter, cream of tartar, salt, and baking soda -- the end result is absolutely delicious. The popcorn was crisp and sweet and delightful. As a bonus, Sally says it stays fresh for two weeks; I made mine a week in advance and stored it in Ziploc bags. I will mention that as I was making the popcorn I thought I didn't have enough caramel, because it wasn't enough to coat all of the popcorn. But then I realized that in the photos in the cookbook and on Sally's website, her popcorn is not completely coated with caramel either. You can see some white bare spots on my caramel corn in the photo below.
I really like Butterfingers, but if you asked me to describe what the heck is in a Butterfinger center, I would have to say that I have no idea, except that it includes peanut butter. I was surprised at how straightforward the filling recipe is for the Theo Chocolate version. You cook sugar, water, and corn syrup to 305 degrees and add a warm mixture of peanut butter and salt. The resulting mixture begins to set very quickly, and even though I immediately scraped it into a parchment-lined pan after folding in the peanut butter, it was setting up so fast that I couldn't smooth it out before it hardened. I immediately scored the candy and let it sit at room temperature for the better part of a day. When I tried to cut it into squares along the score marks, I ran into problems with lots of pieces crumbling and breaking apart, especially around the edges. The photo below shows how I ended up with pieces of candy that were all different sizes and heights (if the tops of the pieces weren't level, I cut or shaved them down so that they weould be smoother for dipping). What isn't included in the photo is the substantial pile of small candy pieces and crumbs that I ended up with; they were unsuitable for dipping and I saved them for a project that I'll discuss in a future post.
I dipped the candy centers into tempered Cacao Barry 38% Lactée Supérieure milk chocolate. These little chocolates were freakin' delicious. The centers really did taste just like the center of a real Butterfinger, although the texture was more dense and less flaky. I could eat an awful lot of these peanut butter buddies, and I definitely hope to make them again.
I made the brittle by cooking water, brown sugar, and granulated sugar to 300 degrees; adding vanilla and baking soda; pouring the mixture onto a parchment-lined tray; letting it cool; spreading on melted dark chocolate (I used Cacao Barry extra-bitter 64% Guayaquil); and sprinkling on toasted sesame seeds and chopped hazelnuts. I let the chocolate set at room temperature and then broke up the brittle into pieces. I did encounter an odd problem where when I broke up the toffee, the chocolate layer -- which was completely set -- did not appear to be solidly affixed to the toffee. In numerous instances, the chocolate and the toffee didn't break in the same place, and the chocolate sheared off (taking the hazelnuts and sesame seeds with it), leaving naked toffee beneath. Also, a fair number of hazelnuts fell off -- in the future, I would chop the hazelnuts into slightly smaller pieces. But the brittle was delicious, and nicely crisp without being too hard.
Persian dried limes are not just dried -- they are boiled in brine first. To make the ganache for the truffle centers, I busted open a few of the rock-hard limes with a mortar and pestle (the inside of the fruit is black -- if you've never seen dried limes before, there is a nice photo accompanying this article where Yotam Ottolenghi talks about them), and added them to some heavy cream, along with half a vanilla bean, honey, and sugar. I brought the cream to a simmer and poured it through a sieve over some dark chocolate. I added salt and whisked the ganache until it was smooth; let it cool at room temperature and then chilled it until firm; used a scoop to portion out the centers; chilled the centers again; smoothed out the centers by rolling them between my palms; and put them back in the fridge. Then I coated the chilled centers in melted dark chocolate (not tempered) and rolled each truffle in chopped pistachios.
While the truffles looked terrific, I did not like the way they tasted. I can't even describe the flavor -- the first thought that popped into my head when I tried one was "exotic" and "foreign," but not in a good way. The flavor wasn't bright and citrusy so much as it was as it was sour and salty, with a finish that lingered. The lime flavor was surprisingly strong, given that their flavor is merely steeped into the cream in the centers. But apparently our party guests were not big fans either, because I had quite a few left over at the end of the evening. I think that dried lime is just an acquired taste. I'm sure there are folks out there who think the flavor of these truffles is something quite special, but I am not one of them.
I absolutely loved this toffee. The heat from the cayenne was distinctive without being too spicy. And all of the components work so well together -- the crunchy-crisp cracker, the rich toffee, the bittersweet chocolate, the crunchy pecans, and the chewy cherries. The salt makes all of the flavors pop. If I have one complaint, it's that most of the cherries fell off when I broke up the toffee. In the future, I would probably chop the cherries into pieces so that they might have a better chance of staying attached to the chocolate (I used dried cherries from nuts.com that are particularly big and plump). But this is a great dessert that comes together quickly, and it's rich, so a little goes a long way.
Recipes:
- "Old-Fashioned Caramel Corn" from Sally's Baking Addiction by Sally McKinney, recipe available here.
- "Peanut Butter Buddies" from Theo Chocolate by Debra Music and Joe Whinney.
- "Dried Lime Truffles with Honey and Salt" and "Hazelnut and Seed Brittle" by Helen Goh, available here from The Guardian.
- "Salted Cashew Caramels" from The New Sugar & Spice by Samantha Seneviratne.
- "Spiced Dark Chocolate-Cherry Saltine Toffee" from Garden & Gun.
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