Sending out early Valentine’s Day wishes! It’s Fat Tuesday/Carnival today and Ash Wednesday tomorrow, so I thought to get my fill of chocolates today while having our sweet, mini-Carnival celebration at home.
I made these chocolates last weekend. They are made from almond-bacon butter toffee and enrobed in a mixture of semi-sweet and milk chocolate. I ate a few pieces before enrobing in chocolate–oh boy, were they good! The bacon flavor added another dimension, but didn’t scream out, “Here is bacon!!” It was a great balance.
In case you haven’t made butter toffee before, it is basically 1 part sugar and 1 part butter heated to soft crack stage, around 298°F. Then it’s poured onto a large pan or counter in a thin layer to cool. It turns hard pretty quickly. When cool, it is usually slathered with a thin layer of chocolate and covered with chopped nuts. To serve, you break the big slab into irregular pieces. In my case, I wanted to make enrobed chocolates out of squares instead of irregular pieces, so I had to work fast to cut out the squares before the slab completely hardened.
Right after making the almond bacon batch of toffee, I made a batch of toasted almond toffee. I toasted the almonds, coarsely chopped the almonds, and then mixed them in with the toffee while the toffee was still hot. The surface was a little lumpy before enrobing, and that showed through after enrobing!
But these are so, so good! I can’t decide which are better, the almond bacon toffee, or the plain almond toffee. In either case, I need to redo them and post the recipe!
I made some rough and tumble-style “mediants,” which are a dab of chocolate decorated with pieces of dried fruit and/or nuts. I used only dried apricots this time.
Nothing beats chocolate!
2 Comments
So true, nothing beats chocolate! They look incredible. Happy Valentines Day!
I second that! Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you got a chance to enjoy some chocolates yesterday, today, and everyday . . . .