On the website Chow, they have a selection of chocolate bar recipes that are designed to replicate, as closely as possible, commercial bars like Snickers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Almond Joy.
Now, if you’re getting into making chocolate bars, I think it would be best to try out your own recipe. But if you wanted to get your feet wet following along, this would be a great place to start!
(via the Globe and Mail, thanks Matt!)
I cannot thank Francis Lam at Salon enough for this recipe:
Candied bacon
Adapted from the amazing Andrea Albin and her recipe for frozen peanut butter pie in the September 2009 issue of Gourmet.Makes 10 strips
Ingredients
- ½ pound bacon (10 strips)
- ¼ cup sugar
- Dash ground cinnamon (optional, to taste)
- Pinch ground coriander (optional, to taste)
- Pinch ground chile powder (optional, to taste)
Directions
- If using spices, stir them into the sugar and mix evenly.
- Lay the bacon in one tight layer in the heaviest, widest skillet you have, and set it over medium heat. If you can’t fit all the bacon at once, do this in multiple batches. Cook the bacon, flipping after a few minutes, until it’s nicely shrunk, starting to brown, but still pliable, about 6 minutes in the pan. (If you want to make a whole bunch, do it in the oven: Lay the bacon out, again in one layer, on a rimmed, parchment-lined sheet tray and bake in a preheated 350 oven. Check on the bacon in about 20 minutes.) When ready, pour off the fat, saving it for other, delicious uses, and let the bacon drain on paper towels.
- If you plan on serving the pieces in half, cutting them now is a good idea, and it will probably let you fit more pieces in the pan at once. Set the skillet back on medium heat with as much bacon as it will take in one layer. (Sorry, bakers; you’ll really want to do the candying step on the stove so you can keep an eye on the sugar.) Sprinkle the sugar over the bacon, remembering to save some if you’re doing this in multiple batches, and let it cook until the sugar melts. At this point, turn the heat down to medium-low and keep a close eye on it, making sure it doesn’t get too dark and burn. With tongs, swish the bacon around so that it’s entirely coated in the molten sugar. When the bacon looks dark and shiny, and the sugar has taken on a light brown color of its own, remove the bacon to a plate or a cutting board to cool. Make sure you give them some room so they don’t stick to one another, and DON’T PUT IT ON PAPER TOWELS. Trying to rip the stuck bits of paper towel of candied bacon is more impossible than trying to de-toilet-paper your tree. Once it’s cool, trick or treat!
Note: Candied bacon can be stored out of the fridge in an airtight container for a day, but will lose its crispness. If you want, you can precook the bacon and refrigerate it, and then candy it with the sugar the day you want to serve it.
At a special chocolate event at Winnipeg’s The Forks Market, I got to try a wonderful thick-cut bacon that had been dipped in spicy chocolate. It was delicious.
I don’t have a kid, but I do strenuously maintain a childlike sense of wonder inside my own self, so there’s a wee bit of giddyness bubbling up inside me as I read through the recipe for Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal on the Cooking With My Kid blog.
Using a small sugar pumpkin, just hollow the insides out, plop in some steel cut oats, along with spices, butter and a little milk, then bake for 45 mins or an hour at about 375 F. They say to leave the lid off the pumpkin for the first 20 minutes or so and then to put it on loosely, to let steam escape. Also, they recommend soaking the stem in some water.
There’s a full recipe with measurements and everything here, but I’d bet this is the type of thing that rewards experimentation!
Amy, we are so doing this on Hallowe’en morning!
(via Boing Boing)
I have been enthralled by something I stumbled on completely by accident. Henley’s Twentieth Century Formulas, Recipes And Processes was published in 1916 and contains “ten thousand selected household and workshop formulas, recipes, processes and money-saving methods for the practical use of manufacturers, mechanics, housekeepers and home workers.”
I haven’t gone through all of the recipes and formulas yet, but I did scroll through the list. Some of them look completely beyond me. I just have no use for dental cements, for example.
But some of the things sound amazing and I’d love to give them a try:
Make Your Own Worchestershire Sauce
And, are five Substitutes For Coffee enough? (Henley warns to watch out for too much chicory in your coffee, too: “the continual use of roasted chicory, or highly chicorized coffee, seldom fails to weaken the powers of digestion and derange the bowels.”)
I’m seriously considering making some of the beverages or the confections that are in the book. I will keep you posted!
