Sugar OVERLOAD

a.k.a. Sugar Candies week
Wow, where to begin? We made sooooo much candy this week.
well, we made marshmallows “guimauve” (gee-MONH) in French ;) 
(i know, right? so cool!) 
We made caramels, chocolate and salted butter caramels. (um, can you say SOOOO bad for you?!?) So yummy. The salted butter caramels are a favorite!!!!


We made pate de fruit (pah te FWEE). It’s a fruit jelly candy that I just LOVE. Apricot Passion fruit flavored
and raspberry flavored
We also made a pear cassis flavored one…but it flopped. We didn’t add the pectin at the right time, so it didn’t set up. According to Chef, it would have been great on toast…but that’s not exactly what we were going for ;) oh well 

Let’s see…we made gummies
We almost had a crisis making the gummies!! You had to add tartaric acid at a certain temperature while cooking to so that the gummies set up (become firm) and you actually get a gummy texture. Well, we were THREE degrees away from said temperature, when the tartaric acid SPILLED!! AHH!
If you can’t tell, it spilled on my notes…but anyway, we scrambled to get more and with a little help from Chef, we got it rescaled and ready to go. Turns out we didn’t need to freak out because it took another 7-10 minutes to get 3 degrees hotter. figures. ;) But they turned out great!
whew!
We also made pastille (pah-STEE), which are little lozenges. But NOT medicine. Although we had to make them mint flavored, so they still were slightly reminiscent of a cough drop ;)

Although I must say, I do enjoy making green sugar…it looks like witches brew!! ;)  A very light, refreshing candy ;)
We made nougat (NOO-gah – for those attempting my french pronunciation helps) We also made chocolate nougat, but you’ll see a picture of that later… Nougat is a whipped confection and ours has pistachios and almonds in it. Oh yum :)

We also made French Pralines. They are candy coated almonds and they took us all week to make because after each coating (we coated them 4 times) they had to dry out. French pralines are traditionally pink. And pink they were…
We coated them by hand the first 3 times, then the fourth we got to use a panning technique with the KitchenAid.
KitchenAid has a panning attachment?!? Okay mom, just so you know, I’m totally converted. I definitely need a KitchenAid mixer. Happy now? ;)
Here are our VERY PINK pralines in the panner. I know it’s way blurry…but…i thought it was kinda cool… ;)
Meet my partner. His name is Kish. It’s kind of funny having a guy as a partner, simply because in the cake program, we were ALL girls ;)
All packaged and pretty!

And finally, we made lollipops and hard candies. Oh lava hot sugar, how I’ve missed you! Lollipops were actually just casted sugar. We could put them in molds, or free hand them. I totally free handed them ;) Yeah, you like that crazy one there? That one, I get to eat ;) This was also really fun because we got to flavor the sugar however we wanted. These are lemon flavored lollipops. That’s why they’re yellow. ;)
And last, but certainly not least, the pulled sugar hard candies ;) The really exciting thing is that I think I'm (or at least my hands) are getting tougher!! It wasn’t NEARLY as hot and painful as I remember it ;)
Ta da!! ;)    
Chef put together a display of an example candy buffet. It’s gorgeous. I think I need to throw parties for a living. In addition to pastries and cakes, of course ;)
Yeah, that glass like stuff in the front? that’s sugar. Sweet, huh? (pun TOTALLY intended)
Oh man, I love it.
And that pretty much wraps up sugar candies week. Oh, except for one more item of business…
My creations have taken up a majority of the kitchen counter, you see:And I promise you, there’s NO way John and I are going to eat all of this. And I can’t stand the idea of it all going to waste!!
So. I’m going to have my very first giveaway! I know!! I’m so excited!!! The winner will receive a box of goodies from this ginormous pile here. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling me what you would most like to try. I will try to include all the varieties that we made, hopefully they all ship well ;) One comment per person please!! Winner will be chosen by random.org and announced on Wednesday, January 26th.

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Oh, and parents, siblings, and in-laws - you can still comment (because I LOVE to hear from you) but you guys are already going to get a box of treats. If you show up on random.org as the winner, I’ll just run it again ;) 
And that’s it for today! Next week is ice creams and sorbets (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and we were told we’ll be bringing home an ice cream cake everyday from Tuesday to Friday. Eek! I have to clear out the freezer!!!