Fried bread with bananas. Delicious.

I did run into a small rock solid problem. My dark brown sugar was hard as a rock. Hold your collective eye rolls. Yes I know the slice of bread trick or the sliced apples trick to keep brown sugar from drying up. But for what ever reason I spaced and didn’t. Fun fact, a microwave, damp paper towel, bowl and cling wrap make a nice humidifier.

But back to the point. These things were damn tasty. If you don’t like banana then they probably  aren’t for you. I used banana rum and dark rum and they both worked well in this. Hope to make more to share but for now, I am going to clean my plate.

Sweet. Smooth. Chocolate.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about malt. Growing up “Whoppers” weren’t the go to Halloween candy and other than the Christmas Story I had never heard of Ovaltine. The process was pretty painless. I strained it twice and was glad I did. Chunks of sea salt would’ve taken away from the silkiness of my end product. I’d make these again. Maybe with dark chocolate. But over all I am happy with result. Hope everyone else had the same success.

Not exactly sure if I did it right but happy with my result. They were too “white” for my liking so I added chocolate. Who am I kidding? I wanted chocolate on them from the beginning. Hope everyone else had a good time with these.

I won’t say this was a disaster nor will I say that it was a pure success. It was some where in the middle. I followed the directions as close as one can. Everything was going great until the last step on the stove top. Never did reach 245. The smell of burning sugar told me to abort the mission and hope for the best. The result.Tasty sweet creamy candies with small black bits of burnt sugar. They are good enough for home consumption, no chance would I give these as a gift. I might be inclined to do it again but honestly I am sure if I am cut out for the candy making business.

Hope others had better luck.

Me and Baked are getting into a groove. These brownies were amazing. I spent the weekend baking and left these for last and it was worth the wait. The chocolate (Wegman’s trail mix bar rules) was sweet enough not to over power the mild heat. I would be proud to put these on a cookie plate for that sneaky bearded fella in red.

I will will be making these again. Might even do a “mild” version to see if to taste the difference…. Who am I kidding? i don’t really need to make up a reason to consume brownies. But they would be a good brownie without the spice.

In Baked I Trust.

This time around our assigned recipe was, Caramel Coconut Cluster Bars. (point of order: its CAR-mel, not CARE-A-MEL or any other goof ball pronunciation, now that we have that sorted we can carry on)

Carrying..On…

I joined this confection club for a couple of reasons. The main one was I wanted to use the cookbooks. I have a horrid habit of buying or picking up a cookbook, looking through it, and making a mental list of stuff I’d like to try, only to put the book on a shelf. This club gives me enough structure to actually put forth effort and do, which is great. This week I got a chance to test out a new skill or two and I bought my first ever candy thermometer.

The short bread was easy and delicious. The caramel was far too sticky/gooey. So much so it tested to my dentist’s craftsmanship. I understand now that I wasn’t patient enough. But the sugar wouldn’t get above 220 degrees  and the smell started to turn burnt, I decided to go forth and see what happens. The chocolate was barely a hint. By no means am I down on this. I think after a time or two I could really do this well. If I was to do this again, I would use a better suited pot. Live and learn I suppose.

Bake On.

Ben