Candy distraction
These last couple of weeks have been occupied with a near-constant anticipation of the ringing of the phone: applications for jobs for next year are out, and interviews at the MLA are lining up. Rest assured there'll be more on that in the coming weeks. Probably more than anyone cares to hear, but it becomes all-consuming, I'm afriad.
Anyway, in my quest to distract myself from waiting for the phone to ring, I put my Martha Stewart hat on this weekend and baked for, like, three days. I was excited to try out a recipe for Angel Food candy that I found in the Isthmus a few years ago. Angel Food candy, I discovered after searching for it in the aisles of drugstore chains on the East Coast, is only available in Wisconsin. It's, in fact, made by Kaap's Old World Chocolates in Green Bay, and my grandmother used to have a dish of it around every Christmas. Long story short: I made it, and took some photos. And here they are:
The first step is to boil 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup light corn syrup until they hit 295 degrees on a candy thermometer. Then you toss in a tablespoon of baking soda, which turns the whole thing into a lava-like mess that could easily win an elementary school science fair. Miraculously, all of this crap left in the pot just dissolves right off when you pour boiling water on it.
When you turn this crazy amorphous blob out into a buttered pan, it looks like a deflated and deboned turkey, sort of. You let it cool, and then take a blunt object to it to bash it into pieces, which are extremely irregularly shaped. But that's what we want. Homemade candy is all about being irregularly shaped, digo yo.
Next, you double-boil up some semi-sweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli, but only because they sell it in giant blocks at Trader Joe's. It was a pain in the ass to break up, though) and dunk your irregular candy into the chocolate, making a fine mess, as you can see.
But, once dry, the angel food candy has a lovely hard chocolate outside, and...
...a crackily caramelized -sugar interior. Yum!
This, after only five hours of toil in the kitchen, is a labor of love.
Anyway, in my quest to distract myself from waiting for the phone to ring, I put my Martha Stewart hat on this weekend and baked for, like, three days. I was excited to try out a recipe for Angel Food candy that I found in the Isthmus a few years ago. Angel Food candy, I discovered after searching for it in the aisles of drugstore chains on the East Coast, is only available in Wisconsin. It's, in fact, made by Kaap's Old World Chocolates in Green Bay, and my grandmother used to have a dish of it around every Christmas. Long story short: I made it, and took some photos. And here they are:
The first step is to boil 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup light corn syrup until they hit 295 degrees on a candy thermometer. Then you toss in a tablespoon of baking soda, which turns the whole thing into a lava-like mess that could easily win an elementary school science fair. Miraculously, all of this crap left in the pot just dissolves right off when you pour boiling water on it.
When you turn this crazy amorphous blob out into a buttered pan, it looks like a deflated and deboned turkey, sort of. You let it cool, and then take a blunt object to it to bash it into pieces, which are extremely irregularly shaped. But that's what we want. Homemade candy is all about being irregularly shaped, digo yo.
Next, you double-boil up some semi-sweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli, but only because they sell it in giant blocks at Trader Joe's. It was a pain in the ass to break up, though) and dunk your irregular candy into the chocolate, making a fine mess, as you can see.
But, once dry, the angel food candy has a lovely hard chocolate outside, and...
...a crackily caramelized -sugar interior. Yum!
This, after only five hours of toil in the kitchen, is a labor of love.
Labels: Vittles
posted by SJB at 8:07 PM
2 Comments:
These look fabulous! After seeing the picture yesterday, I dreamed about these all night -- talk about weird. "Dormir con los angelitos", indeed. It even made me want to visit Wisconsin someday (I never saw them in MN). Good luck in Philadelphia!
Fabulous is right!! Even better than the "angelfood" one can buy in WI. It may be a distraction, but it may become a yearly necessity for our Christmas celebration!!! Thanks, Sara.
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