Linzer cookies are a Christmas cookie plate classic that are based on the classic Austrian torte of the same name, which consists of a buttery, nutty dough topped with jam or preserves and then covered with lattice strips of the same base dough. These cookies are very similar, yet the dough is thinner and thus more crisp. The top cookie sports a small cutout in the center, which exposes the jam filling. For a nut whose flavor would really stand out, we chose hazelnuts. We upped the nuttiness even more by also adding a hint of almond extract to the…
Author: chefalice
While peanut brittle gets the attention, this buttery caramelized treat can be prepared with any nut. In this version, we added a touch of sophistication by using hazelnuts and then dressed it up by drizzling the finished candy with chocolate and sprinkling it with salt. Since we didn’t want a chewy candy, we added fat to the mixture in the form of butter, rather than liquid cream like we use in our Salted Caramels, cooking the butter with water, corn syrup, and sugar until the amber mixture reached the right temperature. Before adding the hazelnuts to the caramel, we stirred…
Making chocolate truffles usually isn’t easy or fast; the process of creating a chocolate ganache base, waiting for it to firm up, shaping it into balls, waiting again, and coating the balls with cocoa or nuts can take up an entire afternoon. We wanted a quicker method that would work every time. In the past, the test kitchen has developed a ganache for truffles using chocolate, cream, butter, corn syrup (which smooths out the texture), and vanilla. Could we trim the ingredient list without sacrificing the silky texture? Several tests without corn syrup or butter revealed that, after tweaking the…
These salty-sweet treats are reminiscent of Snickers bars although we think they’re even better, and prettier to boot. The base is a mixture of melted chocolate and chopped peanuts. We also added some coconut oil to this mix; we planned to freeze these treats who doesn’t love a frozen candy bar?—and coconut oil becomes solid at cold temperatures, resulting in a firm base layer with a nice snap. For the easiest-ever peanut butter–nougat filling, we melted peanut butter and butter together and then folded in marshmallow crème before mixing in more peanuts. We spread this plush confection in a thick,…
Fudge isn’t meant to be made just by chocolatiers; homemade fudge can be easy if you know a few tricks. First, while many recipes call for heavy cream, we found that sweetened condensed milk worked better; it’s stable and won’t separate if overheated. Next, we tackled flavor: Some fudge tastes just like cubes of sugar, but we wanted ours to have intense chocolate flavor. Combining a full pound of semisweet chocolate with a small amount of unsweetened chocolate did the trick. We found that the quality of the chocolate used greatly affected the flavor and texture of the fudge. We…
Most people will tell you, with sound logic, that there’s no point making your own baked beans: Heinz trumps all comers. I have some sympathy with this view. Yet shop-bought baked beans are rammed with sugar and salt, and also don’t seem quite right as a side to anything other than a low-effort banger, pie, jacket potato or a full English breakfast. For occasions when you’ve spent a bit of time cooking BBQ ribs, pulled pork, chicken pot pie or maybe just some good-quality sausages, then a smoky home-cooked version does the job very nicely indeed. You could use pre-cooked…
Beans like these should be served in individual bowls, with a ladle or two of stock per person, and topped with something like confit duck leg, unctuous pork belly or pan-fried salmon you know, things that can be easily pulled apart with a spoon. It’s the kind of side I like to gorge on, without bothering to think of additional vegetables to go with it: the bacon, persillade (a dry mixture of finely chopped parsley and garlic) and diced tomatoes really bring the beans to life. That said, the ‘alongside’ ideas below could be rather good (although the quantity of…