Candy making is intimidating to many home chefs because you usually need some extra equipment and you definitely need to be more exact than you do with either cooking or baking. You’ll hear professional chefs on reality shows complain about how challenging it is to bake a cake – but you’ll also notice that they’re never asked to make candy. But even though it requires precision, making candy does not have to be difficult at all and once you have the basic techniques down, you’ll find yourself wanting to make caramels, toffees and truffles a lot more often. The first thing that you’ll need is a good starting point and you can find that with The Sweet Book of Candy Making.
The Sweet Book of Candy Making is set up to give you the basic tools for candy making at home. It starts out with two introductory chapters that cover candy making ingredients and equipment, as well as basic techniques for working with sugar and chocolate. This introduction has enough information to set you up for success with the rest of the recipes, since these basics are always important – and you’ll want to minimize the number of accidental failures that you might have while learning the art of candy making at home. The recipes themselves cover a wide range of categories, from hard sugar candies to fudge to marshmallows, and they include both classic recipes and ones with more modern flavor twists. The final section of the book covers decorating techniques that will help you make your chocolate and candies look picture-perfect.
The recipes are all clearly written with plenty of detail, and the author takes a lot of time to cover common problems and offer troubleshooting tips. With a little patience, you’ll be able to master each recipe and turn out treats that are just as good as what you can buy in a chocolate shop. There are plenty of step-by-step photos that illustrate the process, as well as photos of the finished candies, included with the recipes. But candy making is a process that can’t be rushed, and while you could get away with skipping around to a few of the easier recipes early on, you’ll get the best results if you treat this like a little bit of a sweets class and learn the art step-by-step.
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