I must admit to having a big Amazon addiction! I can't help it, a love of books is a genetic condition in my family... However, in this case a certain amount of blame must go to my lovely friend Helen, who had a copy of my latest purchase which I had a look through and totally fell in love with. I was aware of this book as it's author Eric Lanlard is a favorite of mine, but having seen it in the flesh all my womanly resolve dissolved like hot sugar into cream! So Amazon got more of my cash and I got Eric Lanlard's drool worthy new book
Chocolat. It is filled with gorgeous pictures and recipes that make your stomach rumble just reading them. My first go was his Soft Chocolate Butter Toffee (see what I mean, even the name is yummy!). Having braved fudge making a few times I felt happy to tackle more boiling sugar and having ordered some liquid glucose specially from Ocado (how middle class am I!), I got to have a go. The glucose is important as it makes the toffee beautifully smooth and not gritty. The recipe does call for having three pans of ingredients being heated pretty much at the same time, so it is a little hectic, but as long as you've got everything measured out first it's fine. If you have to weigh something in the middle of it I can see you easily burning the cream or sugar syrup. Toffee making is fairly similar to making fudge, in that you heat the sugar mix up to a specific point, as this is soft toffee you heat it to soft ball stage stirring like crazy, then let it cool slightly stir in the chocolate for flavour. It is then poured into a lined cake tin and left to cool. It makes a really creamy, chocolatey toffee, that is not too sweet as the chocolate used has a lot of cocoa solids in it. I think this would make a lovely present to someone with a sweet tooth, so I may be making this a lot in the future!
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| Three pans all going! |
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| The Caramel being heated and finally the chocolate being stirred in. |
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| The toffee poured into a baking tin to cool |
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| Having cooled overnight it's much darker |
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| Ready to cut up |
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| Toffee Mountain! |
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| Stored in a nice kilner jar. |
I must admit to having a big Amazon addiction! I can't help it, a love of books is a genetic condition in my family... However, in this case a certain amount of blame must go to my lovely friend Helen, who had a copy of my latest purchase which I had a look through and totally fell in love with. I was aware of this book as it's author Eric Lanlard is a favorite of mine, but having seen it in the flesh all my womanly resolve dissolved like hot sugar into cream! So Amazon got more of my cash and I got Eric Lanlard's drool worthy new book Chocolat. It is filled with gorgeous pictures and recipes that make your stomach rumble just reading them. My first go was his Soft Chocolate Butter Toffee (see what I mean, even the name is yummy!). Having braved fudge making a few times I felt happy to tackle more boiling sugar and having ordered some liquid glucose specially from Ocado (how middle class am I!), I got to have a go. The glucose is important as it makes the toffee beautifully smooth and not gritty. The recipe does call for having three pans of ingredients being heated pretty much at the same time, so it is a little hectic, but as long as you've got everything measured out first it's fine. If you have to weigh something in the middle of it I can see you easily burning the cream or sugar syrup. Toffee making is fairly similar to making fudge, in that you heat the sugar mix up to a specific point, as this is soft toffee you heat it to soft ball stage stirring like crazy, then let it cool slightly stir in the chocolate for flavour. It is then poured into a lined cake tin and left to cool. It makes a really creamy, chocolatey toffee, that is not too sweet as the chocolate used has a lot of cocoa solids in it. I think this would make a lovely present to someone with a sweet tooth, so I may be making this a lot in the future!
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