Mint Meltaways and Mint Crunchies

I'm going to Tahoe this weekend with a bunch of friends and I'm always encouraged to bring desserts places. These are two of the chocolates that I'm bringing. I also have plans for an apple crisp and a chocolate cake.

Mint Meltaways (recipe from Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner)
37 oz chocolate, melted
11 oz coconut fat, melted
10 drops peppermint oil

Combine chocolate, coconut fat, peppermint oil. When I do it, I like everything to be at 90F, but I still get swirls of untempered chocolate sometimes. I use this temp gun and I melt everything in the microwave at 10-30 second intervals. Recipe calls for a 12"x12" frame, but I used two 9"x9" cake pans lined with parchment. Pour into the pan after everything's mixed and then wait for it to set. Usually overnight. After that, cut it into squares and dredge in powdered sugar. I tend to have problems cutting it without it cracking, especially when it's cold. I've found that scoring it multiple times with a smaller, sharp, thin knife yields better results.

See what I mean about the swirls?

Dredging in powdered sugar

Finished product as recipe describes

But, for those of you who know me, you know I can't do it all by the book all the time. I also dipped some in a mixture of tempered milk / dark chocolate. I use Guittard 64% dark and 38% milk couverture. Hmm, guess they don't sell the 64% online. I get it from a distributer (pacgourmet.com) since I still have a business license (if you know me you also know I tried to make a go at a silly little chocolate business called tomatette).

Mint Crunchies

This is a simple little thing that I started doing with leftover melted chocolate. After I was done melting chocolate to dip the meltaways above, I put a little peppermint oil in the dipping chocolate and threw in some rice krispies - the kind from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods that aren't mostly high fructose corn syrup. Then I spooned out little blobs.

I think these are one of my boyfriend's favorites.

Apple crisp and chocolate cake recipes to come in the next posts...

Happy making!

Comments

Solid Dark Chocolate Almond Hearts

Decided to do a few Valentine's Day orders this year. I'll make a few more things to fill out my box assortments, but here's the first recipe. Stacey's Dark Chocolate Almond Hearts Ingredients : 24 oz Guittard 64% dark chocolate couverture 11 oz local farmers' market almonds, toasted and chopped Heart Molds I think this recipe has a few too many almonds - I'd probably scale it back to something like 8 oz for next time. Usually I eyeball it, but I wanted weights for my blog. I toasted the almonds first for 15 minutes at 350F since the almonds came straight out of the freezer. Make sure your almonds are around 90F when you add them to your tempered chocolate. Tempering Chocolate (Seed Method) The counter tops were at 62F. This is important. If you are tempering chocolate, make sure that the ambient temperature (as well as working surfaces) are less than 70F. Otherwise chocolate will not temper. I learned this the hard way the first ...

White Turnip Cake (Law Bock Go)

Every Chinese New Year, my mom and I do some Chinese cooking together. What a great opportunity for my new blog, I thought. :) Most of my friends know that I'm just starting my foray into the savory and it's not second nature to me like baking has become (try to ignore my high-altitude and mis-cake chocolate cake posts for now). Usually my mom makes nine-layer pudding (gow chong go), New Year's muffins (fat tay), and New Year's pudding (neen go), and then we make Su Mai dumplings together. This year my mom still made the nine-layer pudding and the New Year's pudding, but we didn't have time for the Su Mai or muffins. We talked about how only she and I like eating the muffins so it would probably be a waste, but she said, "I really only want to make them to see if they burst." I thought that was cute. Bursting fat tay is supposed to signal good luck for the New Year. My mom went to epicurious.com to find our turnip cake recipe. I found this...

Chocolate Chunk Cranberry Cookies

I'd been wanting to try out a recipe with chocolate chunks instead of regular chips and thought I'd give this one a shot. Result: rave reviews from the BBQ I went to at my friend's house. Ingredients (weight not volume) 10.1 oz flour 0.5 oz cornstarch 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 12 tbs (1.5 sticks) butter 7 oz light brown sugar 3 oz granulated sugar 1 egg 2 tsp vanilla bean paste (you can use regular vanilla extract if you want) 9 oz dark and white chocolate chunks (I chopped up a 70% bar and used white chocolate disks 6oz:3oz dark:white - you can use whatever mixture you like, or use chocolate chips) 1/3 c dried cranberries Preheat oven to 350F. Soften butter in the microwave. Beat sugar, egg, vanilla, and butter until fluffy. Add dry ingredients and mix. Drop about 2 tbs of dough at a time on the cookie sheets, about 2" apart (I used a 1 oz scooper). Bake for 10-12 min, rotating the pan once after 6 minutes until edges are starting to bro...

Stacey Makes It

Search This Blog