Candy Licious

For years I've wanted to participate in the Daring Baker's Challenge. It's a fancy pants baking group that montly post a challenge and then participants do their take on the it and blog about it. The blogs come out on the 27th. Hence today I'm blogging.

I'm so excited.

What I like about it is that I learn something that I otherwise might never have reason to know and I get my baking juju on.

The challenge for August was to temper chocolate. One had to mold chocolate or enrobe something and make a different candy.

Candied Mint

My first attempt was candied mint. I eggwashed and covered the mint leaves with superfine sugar. After that dried I coated it with tempered (seeded method) bittersweet chocolate. They were knock your socks off in flavor. The crunch from the sugar contrasted with the melty chocolate in your mouth.

Green Tea Coconut Truffle

I then made a green tea ganache and rolled that in toasted coconut. It made a lovely little candy.

Lilac jelly from the spring.

Lastly, I really wanted to make a molded candy. What you have is a peppered white chocolate filled with lilac jelly.

White Chocolate Black Pepper Lilac Candies

My process could have been better finessed, but the flavor was rocking.

There's plenty for me learn about candy making, but all in all, I'm pretty proud of how this challenge worked.

I'll be back in September!

Bacon Eclair

Maple Bacon Eclair- Winner!

Today is going to busy on the blog. Feast or famine, eh?

I need to celebrate that I won for a second year in a row at the Bacon Camp Throw Down, here in Columbus.

It's a cooking contest where the ingredient of choice is bacon and there are categories, sweet, savory, homemade and fake bacon. There wasn't a fake bacon entry this year. But the sweet category tends to get petty heavy with competition. Well, I took the prize; a nifty bag of bacon theme swag.

What did I do?

Pate a chou with rendered minced bacon. That was filled with a maple pastry cream (not pudding) topped with milk chocolate bacon ganache and then a sprinkle of crunchy turbinado bacon crunch. It took a fair amount of trail and error to get this just right. I'd go all Cook's Illustrated on you. Why the bacon needed rendered. How tasters liked the maple better than vanilla or elderflower filling. How bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate overpowered the bacon flavor, so milk chocolate was the go to flavor. And the topping...it took 4 tries to get what I wanted.

Minis for the attendees. They were so cute!

But I get bragging rights. And yeah, I'll talk you through it if you really want to make them yourself. Hit me up.

I have to blog about my first Daring Bakers' Challenge candy making endeavors shortly too. That's been keeping me occupied this month too.