Photo Monday!
If you’ve been in since last Friday, you might have noticed some changes in the candy case. We’re still trying out new formulas, so there will varied levels of rotation/replacement this season. If you have a favorite, please let us know! That being said, one of the types of confection that Chef is playing with are butter based ganache. This is where you use butter as the “liquid” or emulsifying phase (liquor and liquid flavors might be added, but at a small percentage of the total mass). Most of our ganaches are either based on cream or fruit puree as liquid phase. Butter ganache tends to be a little firmer, but creamy due to the larger percentage of butter fat.
In this case, we have an eggnog butter ganache. The first photo is the confection after having been piped with a star-tip. A small disc of chocolate is piped, left to cool and harden, and then the ganache mixed and piped. Once it sets up a little more, it’s ready to dip or enrobe. This brings us to the second photo, with is one of the creams enrobed and drizzled with a little white chocolate for decoration (with our rum-raisin in the background). Since we were enrobing a couple of different batches that afternoon, we used dark chocolate as normal. Had we wanted to have the ribs show more, we’d have thinned the chocolate with a little extra cocoa butter.
Following that is a batch of unfinished cookies- These are marzipan based cookies, with layers of strawberry, lemon and pistachio, with a touch of raspberry jam in between. They are then enrobed in dark chocolate, so you get a nice snap of chocolate followed by a softer cookie. The flavors are more subtle that forthright, so it’s a nice balance. The only downside is that any batches of these made this season will be in the holiday cookie plate, and not for sale per piece.
Finally in this short photo piece is our new(ish) Linzer tart (note- it’s not a traditional Linzertorte, which is also sometimes called a tart). The shell is made with an amalgam of pate sucre and Linzer dough, so it has more of a tart shell texture, but still the nice Linzer flavor. The filling is a raspberry cremeux, baked in the shell for this dessert (baking the cremeux intensifies the flavors and gives it a slightly firmer texture). The finish is a raspberry glaze and then the edging of Linzer cookie squares.
So, a short photo set for Monday. Have a great start to your week everyone!
