The Baking Bible: Luxury Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee
And here we are, our last new recipe together as Alpha Bakers. Baking through Rose's Baking Bible these last two years has been quite a journey. Parts fun, parts exasperating, time-consuming and lost-in-creating, delicious and exquisite and confidence building, this has been a wonderful experience. I am so glad I got to participate and share along with all of the Alpha Bakers, and all of you who have read along.
Two years ago I struggled with pie dough, thought store bought cookies were good enough to never bother baking my own, and never really had baked a loaf of bread. And now, cookies are one of my favorite things to bake (and store bought cookies are just so lacking), pie dough more often than not comes out flaky and wonderful, and the door to the wonderful world of bread has cracked open. And of course, there are always the cakes.
So anyways, our final project is a wonderful and easy toffee, coated on both sides with chocolate and toasted almonds. Crunchy and sweet and perfect for the holiday platter.
Uncharacteristically, Rose gives a rather large range for the chocolate: anywhere from 170 to 340 grams. I discovered during the test bake that I preferred the lowest amount of chocolate so that the toffee could really take center stage. So I used 160 grams total--80 grams per side. I poured the toffee into an oval that was a bit smaller than called for, so my toffee is thick and there's plenty of chocolate. The chocolate I had on hand was a bit too semi-sweet; had I a higher percentage chocolate I might have considered using more. But then again, maybe not. I like the toffee to be in charge.
The Alpha Bakers are doing one more week together, just for funsies. We are making the amazing Kouigns Amann again, the first recipe we did together way back when. It is the most amazing laminated pastry ever, and one of the most amazing things ever to come out of my kitchen. It takes all freaking day to make, but it is so, so worth it. See you next week, friends.
Two years ago I struggled with pie dough, thought store bought cookies were good enough to never bother baking my own, and never really had baked a loaf of bread. And now, cookies are one of my favorite things to bake (and store bought cookies are just so lacking), pie dough more often than not comes out flaky and wonderful, and the door to the wonderful world of bread has cracked open. And of course, there are always the cakes.
So anyways, our final project is a wonderful and easy toffee, coated on both sides with chocolate and toasted almonds. Crunchy and sweet and perfect for the holiday platter.
Uncharacteristically, Rose gives a rather large range for the chocolate: anywhere from 170 to 340 grams. I discovered during the test bake that I preferred the lowest amount of chocolate so that the toffee could really take center stage. So I used 160 grams total--80 grams per side. I poured the toffee into an oval that was a bit smaller than called for, so my toffee is thick and there's plenty of chocolate. The chocolate I had on hand was a bit too semi-sweet; had I a higher percentage chocolate I might have considered using more. But then again, maybe not. I like the toffee to be in charge.
The Alpha Bakers are doing one more week together, just for funsies. We are making the amazing Kouigns Amann again, the first recipe we did together way back when. It is the most amazing laminated pastry ever, and one of the most amazing things ever to come out of my kitchen. It takes all freaking day to make, but it is so, so worth it. See you next week, friends.
This looks fabulous! I am just in the mist of deciding the chocolate amount. I think Marie used 225g but I wrote to see if that was split in half, almost sure it was. Other than that my mis en place is laid out and hope mine looks as wonderful as yours and tastes nearly as good.
ReplyDeleteWell now I'm all teary! This is a lovely post Jen; captures exactly my feelings very eloquently. Rose really took us on a culinary baking course with this bake along. Your toffee looks gorgeous. You can add photography skills to your baking skills. Sure gonna miss everyone's weekly bake-capades.
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