For this month, the Daring Bakers has the awesome challenge to do chocolate and candy. Two of my favorites! To participate, you had to make two candies. One had to either be a truffle, a dipped chocolate, or a filled chocolate. I racked my brain for a few days, and decided to do a tequila and lime infused caramel topped with fleur de sel and a dark chocolate bonbon filled with spicy bourbon ganache.
The tequila lime caramels were a lot of fun to make, though it took three batches to get them just right. The first batch didn’t have nearly enough tequila flavor and was too soft. The second were the right consistency, but weren’t quite tequila-y enough. Finally, with the third, I got close to where I wanted to be. I think next time, I may infuse the salt with some lime as well, but they are pretty close otherwise. Here’s the final product.
For the bonbon, I wanted to take the concept of my spicy bourbon brownie and turn it into a chocolate. So, I infused the dark chocolate ganache with spices and bourbon until it had just the right amount of heat and then popped it in the fridge to cool down as my kitchen was quite warm (we’re having a mini heat wave in Los Angeles). For the molds, I mixed together cocoa butter and powdered orange dye and used a small paintbrush to paint some gemstone and fleur de lis molds. Then, I tempered the dark chocolate and coated the molds with them. I did set them in the fridge to cool quickly for five minutes because of the heat before filling them with the ganache and sealing them with more tempered chocolate (after which they went back into the fridge for another five minutes). I’m really happy with the results. Let me know what you think!
The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!