Spanish · Dessert
Turrón de Alicante
- Advanced
- 50 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 500 g Marcona almonds, skinned
- 300 g orange blossom honey
- 150 g caster sugar
- 50 ml water
- 1 egg white (about 35 g)
- 1 g fine salt
- zest of 1 lemon
- 4 sheets edible wafer paper (obleas)
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Whipping a meringueSugar stages & caramel
Allergen screen
Found: egg · nuts
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
- Toast the almonds at 160C (320F) for 12 minutes to 15 minutes until pale gold right through, then hold them somewhere warm. 12 min
- Simmer the honey in a wide pan, stirring, until it reads 125C (257F) and the foam settles: you are driving off its water.
- Whip the egg white with the salt to soft peaks in the smallest bowl your mixer takes, or with a hand mixer in a deep bowl, and have it at soft peak before either syrup is ready.
- Boil the sugar and water to 145C (293F), pour it into the whites in a thin thread with the mixer running, follow with the hot honey, then set the bowl over simmering water and stir with a spatula for 25 minutes to 35 minutes, until a teaspoon of the mass dropped into cold water sets hard enough to snap rather than bend. 25 min
- Fold in the warm almonds and the zest, press into a wafer lined 20 cm frame, cap with wafer, weight it flat and cure 24 hours before cutting. 600 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Whipping a meringue 40 recipes
- Bowl and whisk are clean and dry with no trace of fat or yolk. Grease prevents the foam outright, and there is no recovering a bowl that had it partway through.
- The sugar went in gradually once the whites were already foaming, rather than all at once at the start.
- No grit: a little rubbed between finger and thumb feels smooth, so the sugar has dissolved into the foam rather than sitting in it.
- Stiff peaks means the tip stands with a slight bow when the whisk lifts, and the bowl can be tipped without the mass moving in it.
- Glossy and smooth rather than chalky or dull, with no liquid gathering underneath it in the bowl.
Where it goes wrong It was whipped past stiff peaks. A minute beyond glory the protein network tightens and tears, the foam turns grainy and matte, water weeps out beneath it, and folding that into anything gives a mixture that collapses on the way to the oven.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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