Lesson Learned: Frozen Cream != Truffle Making

In case anyone was curious, I performed an experiment. And failed... or succeeded since now I know what happens? Anyway, I learned that you cannot use defrosted heavy cream to make truffles. While making the truffles, the cream seemed a little separate-y after I boiled it, but the end result truffle mixture looked as beautiful and glossy as ever when I placed the plastic wrap on top to let it set last night. Unfortunately, when I tried to roll them this morning, I ended up with this:

There are tiny little spheres in the mixture. At first I thought somehow the sugar from the chocolate had crystallized, and that maybe it would taste grainy. But, strangely enough, these little spheres tasted like chocolate, and they melted in my mouth. The mixture tasted exactly as I had expected (I was making Maker's Mark Whiskey truffles), but the texture was just all off and too soft to be rolled. It actually is an interesting texture and would probably make for a nice unique frosting or spread. Okay, I'm off to try and figure out what to do with this stuff...

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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...

Throwing some shade

Ombre Flowers So I wanted to try that new ombre cake frosting trend. I used whip cream here on an eggless chocolate cake I made for a potluck at work (for those egg-free individuals on my team). Everyone was sufficiently impressed. I was a little disappointed at the messiness of the blue/purple end, and I kinda ran out of cream, but it tasted good. Anyway... Eggless Chocolate Cake 2 c sugar 1 3/4 c flour 3/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder 1.5 tsp baking powder 1.5 tsp baking soda 1/2 c sunflower oil, organic 1 c whole milk, organic 1 c boiling water 1 tsp salt 3 tbs flax seeds Roses 2 c heavy cream 1/4c sour cream 1 tsp vanilla ½ c powdered sugar food coloring (if desired) Pre-heat oven to 350F. Soak flax seeds in milk for an hour or overnight (or use flax meal). Blend (I used a stick blender). Mix dry ingredients. Mix in wet ingredients, with boiling water being last. Pour into cake pan (9x13). Bake for 30 min, rotatin...

Stacey Makes It

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