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Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: From-Scratch, All-Natural, Gloriously Grown-Up Confections

Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: From-Scratch, All-Natural, Gloriously Grown-Up ConfectionsSolid chocolate bars are a good way to get your chocolate fix. They’re easy to store and you can break them into pieces to eat over time. But solid chocolate bars  don’t hold a candle to a well-made candy bar, where you get a different combination of flavors and textures in every bite along with that rich taste of chocolate. When you think about candy bars, you might think about mass-produced “junk food”, but just because Snickers are popular, doesn’t mean that they are the only way to enjoy a candy bar. Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: From-Scratch, All-Natural, Gloriously Grown-Up Confections walks you through the process of making your own candy bars, step by step.

The book is broken up into chapters that cover both classic candy bars and more creative ones, that way you can both recreate a favorite and come up with something completely new. The introductory chapters cover the ingredients and tools that you’ll need for candy bar-making success, as well as giving you a crash course in the history of candy bars. When you get into the recipes, you’ll notice that they’re all broken down into different components. Good candy bars always have a least a few elements and you’ll see how easy it is to mix and match while you work your way through some of the recipes. The recipes themselves are easy to follow, but do take a little bit of patience because some of them involve a little bit more technique than your average cookie recipe. Once you get the hang of things, you can use the mix-and-match flavor chart to move away from the recipes that are included in the book and work on your own creations. Just about everything is illustrated with gorgeous photos that make the bars look irresistible, and flipping through the pages should get your mouth watering just enough to prompt you to tackle your first candy bar recipe.

It is well worth practicing your chocolate tempering skills so that you get the best results from your bars and have a picture-perfect finish on each one. That said, even if you don’t end up with something that looks as good as a store bought bar, the taste will more than make up for it. As is the case with all chocolate work, be sure to start with high quality ingredients and very high quality chocolate, since it will really make a difference in the quality of your finished candy bars.

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1 Comment
  • Shikha @ Shikha la mode
    February 10, 2014

    I really do need to practice my chocolate tempering skills. I wish the tempering machines weren’t so expensive!

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