not quite what they mean by nose candy
Dec. 27th, 2004 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alenxa_classicTwo or three years ago, chocolate peppermint bark appeared at Starbucks and I had to make it myself. It's a layer of dark chocolate topped with a layer of white chocolate, with crunched-up peppermint candies or candy canes on top. I made it again this year, but in light of being in a second-floor apartment and recently having made stuff involving cookies crunched up (loudly) with the classic rolling pin, was reluctant to use the same method of crunching the mints. I was also less than sanguine about cleaning up the sticky pink dust from the inevitable holes that result when pounding things sealed in Ziplocs. So, time to explore other methods.
First shot: the food-processor attachment for the blender. This is a globe of plastic resembling a cross between a water-cooler bottle and the top of a gumball machine, with a ninja star inside. The top comes off, you put the food inside, and then the top locks back on and you hit "pulse" until you have food mush or crumbs. I tossed in about ten candies, locked the top in, and hit the button. Instant white-noise deafness, to the point that I only realized a second later how loud the rattling of candy on plastic was. Also, there was a fine dusting of pink on the counter. Determined, I put a hand over the air vents on the top of the globe and kept pulsing. I quickly realized that the dust was actually sifting out from between the halves of the globe, and doing so at a prodigious rate. So much for a locking seal. I put the resulting crunch in a bowl and looked for alternatives.
Coffee grinder! my brain said. Okay, why not? I'd need to keep the amount down, though, or risk getting nothing but pink powder while it churns through the mass of material. Toss in three candies, pulse for a second or two. No louder than grinding coffee, but the dust on the inside of the cover obscured my view of the results, so I took it off. Peppermint dust wafted up in a tendril of imitation smoke. Wow. There's something you don't inhale every day. The crunch level of the candy was not bad, though, so I did a couple more batches before realizing two things. First, it was slow. Second, and most important, it was producing a lot of pink dust and white candy chunks. The blade action on hard candies was shaving off all the pretty swirly outside parts and leaving plain white inner core to get chunked. Slowly it dawned on me that the only way to keep the swirlies was to splinter the candies from the inside out, and the only way to do that was to shatter them. With a blunt instrument.
So, out came the Ziploc and the rolling pin. It's truly interesting how circular it is to be frustrated at having to hit something. On the other hand, it's good to know that a single good sharp whack in the center of a peppermint will fragment it better and more cleanly than trying to roll it to death. Just wham wham wham and you've got great decorative shards. Only two problems: it was the evening of the 24th, and we may have irked a whole dinnerful of neighbors; and the brute force method put very nice, very large holes in the bag. I have never been so glad that sugar is water-soluble.
After this, the spreading of white chocolate over still-wet dark chocolate was much less annoying. It was still tricky, but I was trying to avoid the previous problem of the candy separating into layers, which I had attributed to having let the bottom layer set up before putting the top on. I got a lot of minor swirling due to chocolate physics, but the peppermints covered it nicely. And it didn't separate. Now I just need to get good at the layering part and I'll be set to mass-produce next year.
First shot: the food-processor attachment for the blender. This is a globe of plastic resembling a cross between a water-cooler bottle and the top of a gumball machine, with a ninja star inside. The top comes off, you put the food inside, and then the top locks back on and you hit "pulse" until you have food mush or crumbs. I tossed in about ten candies, locked the top in, and hit the button. Instant white-noise deafness, to the point that I only realized a second later how loud the rattling of candy on plastic was. Also, there was a fine dusting of pink on the counter. Determined, I put a hand over the air vents on the top of the globe and kept pulsing. I quickly realized that the dust was actually sifting out from between the halves of the globe, and doing so at a prodigious rate. So much for a locking seal. I put the resulting crunch in a bowl and looked for alternatives.
Coffee grinder! my brain said. Okay, why not? I'd need to keep the amount down, though, or risk getting nothing but pink powder while it churns through the mass of material. Toss in three candies, pulse for a second or two. No louder than grinding coffee, but the dust on the inside of the cover obscured my view of the results, so I took it off. Peppermint dust wafted up in a tendril of imitation smoke. Wow. There's something you don't inhale every day. The crunch level of the candy was not bad, though, so I did a couple more batches before realizing two things. First, it was slow. Second, and most important, it was producing a lot of pink dust and white candy chunks. The blade action on hard candies was shaving off all the pretty swirly outside parts and leaving plain white inner core to get chunked. Slowly it dawned on me that the only way to keep the swirlies was to splinter the candies from the inside out, and the only way to do that was to shatter them. With a blunt instrument.
So, out came the Ziploc and the rolling pin. It's truly interesting how circular it is to be frustrated at having to hit something. On the other hand, it's good to know that a single good sharp whack in the center of a peppermint will fragment it better and more cleanly than trying to roll it to death. Just wham wham wham and you've got great decorative shards. Only two problems: it was the evening of the 24th, and we may have irked a whole dinnerful of neighbors; and the brute force method put very nice, very large holes in the bag. I have never been so glad that sugar is water-soluble.
After this, the spreading of white chocolate over still-wet dark chocolate was much less annoying. It was still tricky, but I was trying to avoid the previous problem of the candy separating into layers, which I had attributed to having let the bottom layer set up before putting the top on. I got a lot of minor swirling due to chocolate physics, but the peppermints covered it nicely. And it didn't separate. Now I just need to get good at the layering part and I'll be set to mass-produce next year.
