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Adventures in candy making
I had been meaning to make my first-ever batch of pecan pralines for a long time now. I'd put it off long enough, and today I decided to make them!
First, you have to realize that there are hundreds of recipes for these treats called "pralines". The one that I chose seemed to get a lot of rave reviews on the site that I found it on. So, I went with it. Everything seemed to be going well up until the point where I began to wait for the pralines to set. They just weren't getting hard!
I nudged them and they got wrinkly. I backed off for a few minutes. Returning with a toothpick, I took a cautious jab at the center of one. The toothpick went in all the way. Not good, I thought. Returning to the computer, I sought some praline-making advice. I read a bunch of recipes, none of which were the one that I found, and would you believe that every single recipe ended with "let cool"? FOR HOW LONG? WHEN THE HELL DO THEY SET UP?!?
I am coming to the conclusion that something went wrong. I read that making them correctly is difficult, due to their tempering. You have to have the right heat. Well, I found instructions telling me to cook the mixture from anywhere between 350F to 500F, so who knows what's right? Didn't I stir long enough? Should I have kept them on the heat longer? Were the ingredients wrong? Who knows. All I know is that pecans are expensive, and if I don't have firm pralines by morning, I'm going to dig out the pecans and put them on ice cream! ;^)
Hey Pimme,
Check out this site on pralines :p http://home.att.net/~magnoliaholidays/pralines.html
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Confusion in cooking... sounds like me every time I try!
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My daughter made some cookies for her friends when she was down the other
day... thank goodness she messed a batch up or I'd never been able to have
any. :)
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probably one of life's greatest mysteries...getting food to turn out
exactly like in the picture/recipe.
enjoy the pecans and icecream. sounds yummier than pralines:)
That's the trouble when cooking an unfamiliar recipe...the ingredients
aren't cheap, as you said.
I made some chocolate cake and didn't bake it
enough..wow, what a solid slab...lol..
Very frustrating, when it takesa
lot of time and effort!
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Pimme, I so understand your pain. I tried to make Anise candy squares on
Sunday. I must not have boiled the candy long enough, for I now have Anise
Carmel. Oh well, I tried. It is still tasty though!
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I try to cook. It never works. I am to impatient to wait the entire
cooking time. I made the bisquits from pillsbury, the cresent rolls that
take like 10 minutes, - I decided they looked done at 6 minutes. They
weren't.
Rachel [libragril@yahoo.com]
I say just eat the whole gooey mess and enjoy! :)
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