Ohio · Dessert
Cincinnati Opera Cream Candy
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma.
Ingredients
- 400g sugar
- 250ml cream
- 60ml corn syrup
- 55g butter
- 1 tsp vanilla
- Pinch of salt
- 300g dark chocolate for dipping
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Butter a marble slab or sheet pan.
- Boil the sugar, cream, corn syrup, butter, and salt to 114C, stirring gently.
- Pour onto the slab and let it cool to lukewarm without stirring.
- Work it with a spatula, folding and turning, until it turns creamy, opaque, and thick, 10-15 min. 15 min
- Add the vanilla, form into small logs or squares, let them dry an hour, then dip in melted chocolate.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Banyuls or Ruby Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry
- From the Taps
- Imperial stout
- Zero-Proof
- Espresso
Chocolate wants fortified sweetness or roast-bitter contrast: the wine must out-sweet the plate, or oppose it entirely.
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