Here I am, catching up on my Christmas baking posts. These are the chai shortbread cookies I like to make because the smell of the baking spice masala really makes me think of Christmas. This year I ground up the cardamon by hand so that you get hits of it in certain bites of the cookie. I also made a chocolate version, substituting melted dark chocolate for some of the butter in the recipe. One of my relatives is allergic to wheat, so I made one batch with spelt and rice flour.
For the chocolate truffles, I learned from a chef that you need to blanch the almonds to make almond paste so because moisture content is very important. Roasting the almonds makes the oils "split" from the meat. So here I just put about two cups of almonds in a pot of boiling water to cover.
After five minutes, you drain the water, pour cold water over top, and drain again. As you can see here, it's easy to pop the nut meat from its skin. In fact, f you're not careful the nut can fly across the room when it pops out of its skin. Ules helped out with this.
I didn't measure anything exactly, just put the blanched almonds in the food processor and added honey, dried cherries and kirsch to taste until the mixture was sticky and I could form marble-sized balls with it. I used about 1/3 cup kirsch, 2/3 cup dried cherries and 1/3 cup honey. I didn't cook the mixture because the chocolates aren't meant to have a long shelf life. (Keeping them refrigerated also helps them last longer.)
Once again, I didn't fuss withe tempering the 70 percent cocoa solids Baker's chocolate. I just nuked it until most of it was soft, then stirred it until the rest of the chunks dissolved. (I think I did actually manage to fluke out and achieve temper this time.) I didn't dip the chocolates the way you are supposed to--just rolled the almond paste balls in a shallow bowl of melted chocolate and placed on waxed paper. This just saves time and none of the chocolate is wasted, however in the end the shells were a bit too thin. Next, I popped the chocolates in the back porch (in lieu of a fridge) to firm them up. The flavors in the almond paste actually meld and tastes better after a few days, so making the paste ahead of time would be a good option for next year. You could use orange peel and Grand Marnier to flavor the almond paste, you could use walnuts or hazelnuts instead of the almonds--there are lots of possibilities. I'll confess I tasted so many kinds of marzipan chocolates this month before making these that I could barely eat them. Which in my case, is probably a good thing!
Here I am, catching up on my Christmas baking posts. These are the chai shortbread cookies I like to make because the smell of the baking spice masala really makes me think of Christmas. This year I ground up the cardamon by hand so that you get hits of it in certain bites of the cookie. I also made a chocolate version, substituting melted dark chocolate for some of the butter in the recipe. One of my relatives is allergic to wheat, so I made one batch with spelt and rice flour.
For the chocolate truffles, I learned from a chef that you need to blanch the almonds to make almond paste so because moisture content is very important. Roasting the almonds makes the oils "split" from the meat. So here I just put about two cups of almonds in a pot of boiling water to cover.
After five minutes, you drain the water, pour cold water over top, and drain again. As you can see here, it's easy to pop the nut meat from its skin. In fact, f you're not careful the nut can fly across the room when it pops out of its skin. Ules helped out with this.
I didn't measure anything exactly, just put the blanched almonds in the food processor and added honey, dried cherries and kirsch to taste until the mixture was sticky and I could form marble-sized balls with it. I used about 1/3 cup kirsch, 2/3 cup dried cherries and 1/3 cup honey. I didn't cook the mixture because the chocolates aren't meant to have a long shelf life. (Keeping them refrigerated also helps them last longer.)
Once again, I didn't fuss withe tempering the 70 percent cocoa solids Baker's chocolate. I just nuked it until most of it was soft, then stirred it until the rest of the chunks dissolved. (I think I did actually manage to fluke out and achieve temper this time.) I didn't dip the chocolates the way you are supposed to--just rolled the almond paste balls in a shallow bowl of melted chocolate and placed on waxed paper. This just saves time and none of the chocolate is wasted, however in the end the shells were a bit too thin. Next, I popped the chocolates in the back porch (in lieu of a fridge) to firm them up. The flavors in the almond paste actually meld and tastes better after a few days, so making the paste ahead of time would be a good option for next year. You could use orange peel and Grand Marnier to flavor the almond paste, you could use walnuts or hazelnuts instead of the almonds--there are lots of possibilities. I'll confess I tasted so many kinds of marzipan chocolates this month before making these that I could barely eat them. Which in my case, is probably a good thing!
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