After yesterday's disappointment, I was rather excited to face today's challenge: 2 Turtle Doves! Why you may ask? Because for today's experiment, I chose to interpret turtle doves not as a savory dish of poultry, but instead as candy turtles coated with Dove chocolates! Much to my surprise, I also woke up slightly more excited for the holidays - I guess this countdown really is working?
...but then as I hopped into the subway with Christmas music playing through my headphones, I felt a slight tinge of shame, as if I were listening to Christmas music in July. Not wanting to completely extinguish my slight burst of holiday spirit, I headed towards Dunkin Donuts in search of a Christmas-themed coffee or donut and found...nothing! To be fair, there was one donut glazed with green frosting but...really, nothing else? Not even one peppermint drink or one chocolate peppermint donut? Sigh, New York City - where is your Christmas spirit??
On another completely random side note, I headed to the Food Emporium in Union Square after work to pick up the ingredients for today's project and discovered that this particular store is absolutely awesome - it's almost as well-stocked as a suburban grocery store; I even found Twinkies!
So back to the turtle doves. Ok, I hate to say it, but I failed again. I was so excited for what was sure to be a guaranteed success too - mixing pecans with caramel and coating them in chocolate: how hard can it be?? The most difficult part of this recipe was the caramel, but considering that I've made caramels many times in the past (especially around holiday season), I thought I had nothing to worry about. Boy was I wrong! But on a slightly more positive note, the end result wasn't quite as bad as it could have been; I merely ended up with chocolate covered pecan TOFFEE bites instead of caramel. In fact, I suppose this result could be considered a success given that I prefer toffee over caramel and have always wanted to make toffee but never quite got around to it!
To kick off the process, I tossed about 2 cups of pecans onto a baking sheet and toasted them in the oven at 375 F for 10 minutes because...well toasted pecans just sounded like a nice addition. Toasting the pecans definitely gave them a richer, toasty flavor as well as a more crisp texture, but honestly I could have gone either way, especially since I've never really liked pecans (except in pecan pie!).
I then poured the butter/cream mixture (which actually had formed a rather gross skin on top, so I ran the mix through a sieve) into the caramel, clipped a candy thermometer to the side of the pot, and began stirring away at the crazy bubbles! However, I did make one slight deviation - I removed the caramel from heat so that I could take the pecans out of the oven...and take pictures. I'm not sure how big of an effect removing from heat had, but it did take a little longer before the mixture started bubbling.
After much stirring, the mixture began to slowly rise in temperature and once it broke the 240 F barrier, the temperature shot up - so watch your thermometer carefully! Also make sure to always keep the stove's heat constant (at high, if you're able to really pay attention and stir frequently) and not switch back and forth between medium and high heat, even if you are getting impatient; switching back and forth has dire effects on your caramel's temperature. Lastly, make sure your candy thermometer is properly set up so that it's actually in the liquid...in fact, better that it be touching the bottom of the pan than floating in the air because if your caramel gets too hot, it will turn to toffee! And since the caramel inside candy turtles is supposed to be chewy, I really don't think it can hurt to remove the caramel from heat before it even reaches 248 F...though I don't actually know because I've never tried.
I then mixed the nuts into the caramel mixture and started to spoon clusters of nuts and caramel onto wax paper, letting the clusters harden at room temperature for an hour (or two hours if you've succeeded in producing a chewy caramel). However, a few notes: 1) work FAST, the caramel hardens quickly even if you have successfully made caramel and not toffee 2) use parchment paper and oil it because your caramel will definitely stick to wax paper and very possibly plain parchment paper as well.
I chose to mix together both milk and dark chocolate because I was hoping to capture that delicate balance between chocolate being too sweet and too...not sweet, but after tasting the finished good, I realized it really does not matter - just pick one. I unwrapped the chocolates (about half of each bag), poured them into a bowl, and began heating in the microwave on half power for one minute intervals, stirring in between until the chocolate was fully melted. Once melted, I took each cluster and dipped them in the chocolate, making sure to coat evenly around the cluster, and placed onto a sheet of parchment paper to cool.
Honestly, these "turtle doves" taste fine - they taste like toffee with pecan bits coated in chocolate. And now I am inspired to actually make toffee to hand out as holiday treats. Yay for inspiration!
And because these are Dove chocolates, I absolutely had to read the message on each of the wrappers I had opened. The very first wrapper I picked up told me to "slow down" - this could have been great advice while making today's caramel!
Excited and worried for tomorrow's experiment: 3 French Hens. As a disclaimer, I have never cooked nor have I even tasted what I wish to make tomorrow, so it will actually be a lot more difficult for me to proclaim day 3's project a failure (I hope)!
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