Candy

Almond paste is the needed for so many delicious recipes, including marzipan. You can make it yourself!

Tempering chocolate is so important in making candy or other sweet-making applications. It’s not as difficult as it might seem.

Cinnamon Sugared Almonds

Read Full Post »

Almond Twists Revisited

Wild flowers of Palestine. Almond tree in blossom (from a negative taken approximately 1900 to 1920)

I wrote earlier about my first experience making Solo’s Almond Twists but since then I have made them two more times, each batch better than the last.

I have learned some very interesting things.

I have continued to bake them at 350 degrees rather than the 375 degrees indicated in the directions.

It’s irrational, I know, but I started out with that temp and have been loathe to change it. But I will, next time, to see what effect it has.

Rolling the puff pastry out on sugar instead of flour is definitely the way to go, unless you prefer a much less sweet dessert. It’s trickier using sugar because the pastry really sticks to the countertop. Yesterday I finally rolled the pastry on wax-paper and that was a great help. Parchment paper would be even better, if only because it is wider.

Yesterday’s batch got a lot of sugar in all the rollings. Because I was better able to maneuver the pastry on the wax-paper, I rolled it thinner than I had previously (getting 36 1-1/2 inch twists out of a single sheet of puff-pastry — that’s cooked size).

I really prefer cutting the pastry so that the twists are pop-in-your-mouth-and-it’s-gone size, although if you are doing a special breakfast, for instance, the longer size might be nicer for presentation.

I had the assistance of a teenage boy in making the actual twists. Now, I had been twisting them fairly loosely but he really tightly corkscrewed the ones he did.

What a difference the three variables — thickness, sugar application and twisting technique — have on the final cookie!

The thinner the pastry is rolled, the denser the final confection. More tightly twisting the pastry strips makes for an even denser, more cookie-like confection, losing any resemblance to puff pastry, but really nice nonetheless. The greater volume of sugar also increases crispness.

Once I get over my love affair with almond paste I will try making twists with some of the other Solo fillings — like pecan or poppyseed.

Can you imagine the Solo pecan filling on the first fold, with brown sugar on the second?

I just may have to make a trip to the grocery store …

Word of warning: Whatever you are going to unload the hot twists to must be ready when they come out of the oven as they must be evacuated from the pan ASAP or you will literally be chipping them off. I also recommend putting the twists upside down so they don’t seal to the surface. Definitely do not use paper towels.

Read Full Post »

Solo Almond Paste

Pinched Orange Macaroons (photo MarthaStewart.com)

This morning while I was making breakfast I had the TV on to Martha Stewart. She had on as one of her guests the pastry chef from the Four Seasons, Patrick Lemble, and they made Pinched Orange Macaroons.

They are beautiful, aren’t they?

Small, light and almond!

I jumped onto the internet and raced over to look at the recipe. It calls for a pound of almond paste. How much does a can of Solo almond paste weigh?

To answer that question I pulled up the Solo website to see if they had an indication as to the weight of a can of their almond paste. Sadly, no.

So I pulled up the Solo recipe for almond macaroons to look at it alongside the Four Seasons recipe. The Solo recipe calls for 1-1/4 cups sugar and one can almond paste, Four Seasons calls for 1/2 cup confectioners sugar and one pound almond paste, both use whites of two eggs.

Now I like to take several different recipes and take a bit of this from one and a bit of that from the other, but the volumes here were too different for me to simply make the Solo recipe and toss in the almond extract and Grand Marnier from the Four Seasons recipe.

Are you like me in that you would rather eat broken glass than get involved in the hideous phone systems that protect most corporations from the public?

Yeah, well, I called anyway. I have a Jones for almond macaroons.

What a pleasure the call turned out to be!

The first woman I spoke to was able to tell me that the almond paste is 8 ounces but she wasn’t able to say whether that was volume or weight so she transferred me to someone in the recipe department.

The next nice woman was pretty sure it was by weight, but she wanted me to talk to Larry the chef to make sure.

What a great guy!

He said, yes, one can of Solo almond paste is 1/2 pound, so for the Four Seasons recipe I would need two cans. Great! But then I wondered whether the Four Seasons recipe as posted was accurate — I mean, TWICE as much almond paste? Larry said that it sounds right, the Four Seasons macaroons would simply be less sweet than their recipe. My heart be still!

Larry and I had a nice chat about their website. When I asked about the absence of photographs with their recipes, he told me they are working on that and will have photos up soon. I also told him about the recipe index being incomplete and he said he would run over and talk to the website people about getting that corrected. I mean, if the almond twist recipe is not in the index what else is not in the index that I should be making?

It was such a pleasure talking to the folks at Solo. They clearly take their mission seriously. Thank you Solo for making such fine products and allowing the public to speak directly to your kitchen!

And particular thanks to the three Solo staff people who were so helpful and generous with their time this morning.

Solo almond paste rules!

(See also “Almond Twists” and “Almond Twists Revisited“)

Read Full Post »

Almond Twists!

I made them last night and let me tell you — they are fabulous! They are lightly sweet and fragrantly almond puff-pastry delights. Thank you, Solo!

ALMOND TWISTS!

Yield:  approximately 48 twists

Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit

1 package (17-1/4 oz) frozen puff pastry sheets, thawed
1 can (8 oz) almond paste (Solo brand!)
Sugar for sprinkling

Sprinkle work surface with sugar.  Unfold one sheet of pastry and lay flat on sugared surface.  Roll out to 12-inch square.

Divide almond paste in half.  Set half of almond paste aside and break remaining half into small pieces.  Dot over half of pastry sheet.  Fold pastry in half over almond paste and roll out to 10×12 inch rectangle.  Sprinkle lightly with sugar.  Fold in half again and roll out to 10×12 inch rectangle.

Cut pastry in half to make two rectangles, each 5×12 inches.  Cut each rectangle into strips (width-wise), one inch wide each.  Twist strips into corkscrew shape and place on ungreased baking sheets about two inches apart.  Sprinkle lightly with additional sugar, if desired.

Repeat with remaining pastry sheet and reserved almond paste.

Bake 18 to 22 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown.  Remove from baking sheets immediately and cool completely on wire racks.

***

Now, that is the recipe as Solo has written it.

Because I am one who tends to rush ahead before I know where I’m going, I did not read the directions fully before I began — actually, not until I typed them in above! So there are a couple things that I did differently.

First, I didn’t use sugar to roll out the pastry, I used flour. I would definitely go with sugar next time, just because I think there may be some additional “sparkle” to be gained, but if you think there’s already enough sugar (which there is — my twists are delicious!), lightly flour your rolling surface.

Second, I had the oven at 350 rather than 375. I have a gas convection oven and they cooked in 20 minutes (two trays at once). It will be interesting to see what happens at the higher temperature. I have had problems in the past with puff pastry not cooking through fully on the underside yet threatening to become over brown on the upper side, so the slightly lower temp may have worked to my advantage here.

The third issue is not related to lack of reading ahead but rather to my execution — I sprinkled too much sugar on the pastry after the first fold. As a result, the two layers of pastry did not bind well together after rolling, though they did stay together well enough that I was able to make the twists without a problem. Perhaps the “extra” sugar I inadvertently added at this stage “made up” for that inadvertently deleted in the rolling-out stage.

And absolutely — remove the twists from the pan as soon as they come out of the oven. If you don’t, they will stick hard and fast. I didn’t have wire racks but used paper towels, making sure that the twists were all top down, with their bottoms in the air, so that the paper towel did not stick to the cooling sugar on those bottoms.

A recommendation I would make is that rather than cutting the finished pastry in half and then into strips, I would cut it into thirds, so that the finished twists are smaller. The recommended size is not too big necessarily, I just think they would be cuter if they were smaller.

Since I used one of my two sheets of puff pastry to make the ham, swiss & mushroom puff pastry quiche, I only had one to make the almond twists, which means that I still have half a can of almond paste in my fridge. I will be running out to buy more puff pastry so I can make some more of these babies and also try one of the other delicious-sounding variations on the twist theme recommended by Pepperidge Farm and others, such as the glazed apricot twists over at Epicurious.

I have a feeling that many of my friends and relatives will be getting a variety of these crispy little delights for Christmas this year.

UPDATE:   Mmm-mmm!  We made them again and learned new things!

Read Full Post »