Chocolates & Confections Week 4

Chocolates & Confections Week 4: Sugar Cookery

This week, we learned about sugar cookery and sugarworks. Things like caramel, taffy, and hard candy involve cooking sugar to a very high temperature. Today, we made soft caramel (I put cinnamon in mine), chocolate taffy, peanut brittle, and pulled/blown sugar. With pulled/blown sugar, a mixture of sugar, glucose, and water is heated to 290F ~295F, at which point acid (in this case, tartaric acid or cream of tartar) is added. The acid prevents the sugar from crystallizing, keeping it malleable and workable.

Here's my teammate pouring the cooked sugar onto a silpat...

He has to then quickly work in gel food color, using the silpat to manipulate it around and mix it in.

Notice how he's not actually touching the molten sugar. Did I mention this has been cooked to approximately 290F??

Phew! That was HOT! This is the finished sugar, ready to be pulled, blown and shaped. While my friend here practiced with it, I went off to the side and made mixed-nut brittle...

...Ooooh with pistachio, almonds, and walnuts. Peanut Brittles are delicious, but this was just as addictive. Other teams used cacao nibs; pecans and chipotle; and simply almonds.
Same thing here, a mixture of sugar, glucose, and evaporated milk is cooked to a certain temp, at which point nuts, vanilla extract (or other flavorings), and butter are mixed in. Addition of baking soda causes the whole thing to bubble up, incorporating air into the hot caramle-like mix. This gives the brittle a honey-comb like network, giving it a lighter texture. That way, it's still crispy and hard, but not so hard that it'll break people's teeth.

Now back to pulled sugar...my friend grabbed some blue sugar from other teams and made a lovely rose in a vase.

Notice the plastic pen tube in the bottom right corner. We used the plastic tubing of a pen to blow the sugar into balloons and balls. It was a little intimidating at first, but pretty easy once I got the hang of it.

A pink balloon that I blew. Now what to do with it...?

Suddenly, the nerdie biology major in me awakens. This was the resulting product.

...Hehehe. A heart, complete with aorta and pulmonary vein! Come on, it's almost Valentine's day!