Vary It! Dark chocolate is excellent with cherries I believe white coating is too sweet, but in Visual Studio .NET

Painting QR Code in Visual Studio .NET Vary It! Dark chocolate is excellent with cherries I believe white coating is too sweet, but

you can substitute white chocolate if you prefer You temper the dark chocolate as described in 14 To melt the white chocolate, place it in a microwave for about 21 2 minutes on high power, stopping every 30 seconds to stir and check the temperature Heat the chocolate to 95 degrees and coat the cherries

Per Serving: Calories 58 (From Fat 15); Fat 2g (Saturated 1g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 7mg; Carbohydrate 11g (Dietary Fiber 0g); Protein 0g

Although cordial cherries are quite common, you don t often see other cordial fruits Nevertheless, a couple of fruits that cordialize quite nicely are strawberries and raspberries Although these berries have a very short shelf life when partially dipped in chocolate, they do quite well when completely covered

Because these fruits don t come with their own juice, you can use some of the cherry juice from the maraschino cherries The juice is a small part of the piece and doesn t overpower the natural fruit flavor when it cordializes If you use raspberries, follow the exact procedure you do to make cordial cherries If you use strawberries, remove the stem from the strawberry and then follow the procedure for making cordial cherries I don t recommend keeping strawberry and raspberry cordials in a plastic container for more than a week because they break down faster than cherries do

16

Mixing nuts into chocolate Getting to the basics of barks Forming delicious clusters Recipes in This

Pecan, Peanut, and Almond Bark Tiger Butter Crunchy Rice Bark Peppermint Bark for Christmas Hand-dipped Nut Clusters Molded Clusters Peanut Butter Cups

hocolate comes in many forms, and people seem to enjoy chocolate in a thousand different ways But as good as chocolate is, you d probably get bored with it if you always had it the same way Chocolate is available in so many forms that becoming bored with it is difficult to do Sometimes you simply need a good solid piece of pure delight Sometimes you want a bar of chocolate that you can hold in your hand (If it melts, you can always lick your fingers) Sometimes you just want a chocolate cluster or chocolate bark Don t worry, I ve got your back In this chapter, I give you the lowdown on barks and clusters Clusters and bark are made from the same combination of chocolate and nuts Chocolate clusters are just what they sound like: bite-size pieces of chocolate goodness wrapped around a few of your favorite nuts Bark is composed of chocolate and nuts, too, but it is made in tray-size sheets and cut into more manageable pieces about the size of a commercial chocolate bar These two treats taste the same but don t tell that to someone who prefers either version over the other Cluster folks don t like bark, and bark-eaters won t touch clusters Go figure

An essential ingredient in barks and clusters is tempered chocolate Any time you work with real chocolate (which contains cocoa butter) and you re using it for molding, for coating a piece, or as a stand-alone piece such as bark or clusters you must temper the chocolate If you don t temper the chocolate, your finished pieces won t have the fine gloss, and it will develop streaks and spots soon after it cools I explain the tempering process in detail in 14 Another key ingredient common to barks and clusters is nuts, either raw or roasted I use both kinds in my stores: I use roasted salted peanuts, roasted and unsalted almonds and cashews, and raw pecans But what I do is a matter of taste I know candy makers who use roasted salted pecans, and the overall perception is different because a roasted pecan imparts a different taste from a raw pecan I let you decide which taste you prefer and allow you to make your candies accordingly In addition, the amounts I suggest in this chapter s recipes are only suggestions You may, of course, add more nuts or fewer, if you want The amount of nuts suggested is just that a suggestion Always add room-temperature nuts to chocolate for the best results If the nuts are too cool, the chocolate cools too quickly If the nuts are too hot, your chocolate loses its temper because the heat from the nuts causes the temperature of the chocolate to rise above its tempered range of 88 to 91 degrees When you add nuts to tempered chocolate, your chocolate may begin to lose its temper, so you need to work quickly or be ready to heat the chocolate slightly Any time you heat chocolate that you ve already tempered and cooled slightly, take small steps If necessary, heat the cooled chocolate in the microwave just don t let the temperature exceed 91 degrees on a chocolate thermometer because you risk losing the temper Microwave your chocolate in bursts of 3 to 5 seconds, stir, and observe If you make small adjustments, your chocolate should be safe This slight warming is especially helpful when you re hand-dipping clusters Unlike making bark, which involves putting the nuts in and getting the bark out, making clusters can be more time consuming because you make one cluster at a time (For more details, see Pulling Together Chocolate Clusters, later in this chapter)