It's all downhill from here. The insanity of the holiday season starts tonight. You might be where we'll end up tonight- at the kitchen table, sorting, trading and hiding. My husband's go-to candy is the peanut butter cup, and most of them will be consumed by Saturday. We'll get tired of the saccharin candies and crave something a little...more. More flavor, less sugar, more richness. Enter THE HOMEMADE PEANUT BUTTER CUP.
Ruth is our resident chocolatier and confectioner, and the spoils from yesterday's Halloween Chocolates class did not disappoint. I bit into one of the peanut butter cups (it's part of the job) and swooned over the creamy, not-t00-sweet-or-peanut-buttery filling. Got me thinking. You could swap the peanut butter with any number of nut butters- halzenut cups anyone? Almond with dark chocolate shells? In any case, we want you to have fun with this one.
The recipe calls for tempering chocolate, a process which involves melting the chocolate and cooling it to just the right temperature (varies with different chocolatep percentages) so you can create that perfect snap and shine on the chocolate. Don't despair if this is out of your reach; just melt the chocolate carefully in the microwave or gently simmering double boiler. If you want to learn to temper, Ruth's just added two more Making Chocolate Basics classes on
January 17th and
February 6.
Homemade Peanut butter Cups
-Tempered* Milk chocolate
-Peanut Butter Ganache (see recipe)
-Mini baking cups
1) Temper* milk chocolate. Pipe 2 tsps of chocolate into bottoms of mini baking cups.
2) Let set in fridge for 15 minutes.
3) Pipe peanut butter ganache in center of cups. Place in fridge for another 15 minutes.
4) Pipe tempered milk chocolate to top baking cups. Set in fridge until firm.
Peanut Butter Ganache
7 ounces milk chocolate
8.5 ounces creamy peanut butter (or nutella, or other nut butter)
2 ounces butter, browned
1) Melt and bring the butter to a golden brown color.
2) Gently melt chocolate over double boiler then mix with peanut butter and butter.
3) Let cool for 15 minutes. Chill if necessary.
*Generally speaking, in order to temper milk chocolate, you'll want to melt 3/4 of the chocolate you are working with until it reaches a temperature between 104 and 113 degrees F. Remove from the heat (microwave or double boiler, careful not to let a drop of water or steam anywhere near your bowl) and stir in the remaining chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate cools down to between 82 and 83 degrees. The chocolate is considered to be in temper at this stage, though you can warm it no higher than to 87 degrees in order to make it more fluid when using it.
No comments:
Post a Comment