Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Close version of a favorite candy bar...

I mentioned in yesterday's post about another item I was making for Jeffs coworkers to taste test today. I hear they went pretty fast and were given a rating of "totally awesome"... so that has to be good - right?

"Should be" Gluten Free kinda like a Twix Bar is a pretty close version of the original Twix candy bar. I say "should be" because from what I understand there is a question whether some chocolate and some vanilla extracts may or may not have gluten hidden in them, but when I checked mine they were fine. If you have no problem with gluten, feel free to use all-purpose flour instead of using rice flour.

A golden buttery cookie crust is topped with pale sweet caramel that is simply made from reduced sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, and butter. If I were to make this again (oh which I will...) I might let this mixture cook a little longer to get a darker color, but the taste was pretty close. After a couple hours in the refrigerator, this caramel adhears to the cookie base and it can be easily and cleanly cut into long finger-like rectangels. I must confess that I knew I should have used tempered chocolate to coat these candy bars, but I did not have the right kind of chocolate on hand and I didn't have the time anyway. Because of this, and since the bars were still chilly as I coated them, the chocolate began to set a little early on me and they are not as smooth as I would have wanted them to be. I would make sure these are at room temperature before coating them in preferrably tempered chocolate next time.

For dinner tonight we had a tasty shrimp dish, Crispy Sesame Shrimp. Jeff really loves shrimp so I knew I had to make this soon when I found the recipe. The twist on this recipe is that the shrimp are coated with a crunchy mixture of crushed dry stuffin-mix and some additional spices to liven the dish up. The shrimp are quickly dipped in egg whites and then dredged through the stuffing and spices. To help the bottoms of the shrimp crisp up, I preheated the baking pan in the oven for 5 minutes before I placed the shrimp on. The bottoms ended up being just as crunchy as the top without having to flip them, so I will use this technique again.


12 comments:

  1. Is that the shrimp from the recent CL issue? It looks wonderful. Thanks for the tip to heat up the baking sheet. The candy bars look great as well. You are so talented in all your cooking adventures.

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  2. Thanks Punky! Nope this was from April 2000.

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  3. Everything looks so good Joe!
    I loved yesterday's cookies, and Twix is my favorite candy bar, this must be an interesting project!
    Ana

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  4. Man, I used to love me some Twix back in the day- the peanut butter ones, in particular. Great experiment.

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  5. The "Twix" look great, as does the shrimp. I've done a knock off Almond Joy before, but this looks killer.

    Great to see another Phoenix-based food blog.

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  6. Oh thanks Joe! My kiddos adore "crunchy" shrimp...now I can give them a healthier version. I will be taking this one out for a spin this week-end!

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  7. Y'know the candy looks good but the shrimp looks even better!

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  8. Nice!
    Those twix look great!
    you could always just make normal caramel by boiling the sweetened condesed milk submerged.

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  9. Joe you are amazing. those "twix" bars look sooooo good. and i know you said you would have preferred a smoother look (tempered chokky) but i rather like the rustic look of them! next will you try peanutbutter twix version?

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  10. Ana - It was definitely an adventure!

    S'kat - Yeah, PB twix are awesome too!

    TGC - Thanks! I'll have to go looking to see if you posted about the Almond Joy! Where are you at in the Phoenix area?

    Lisa - I hope to hear back if you try it out!

    Rorie - Thanks!

    Clare - I've heard of that method before, but it scares me... hee hee!

    EP - Thank you! I could certainly go for trying some Peanut butter twix.... you've got me thinking now!

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  11. Never posted it, Joe, sorry, I haven't made them in a few years. All my recipes are just 'thrown in a digital drawer' while I redo the recipes section of the site for now, but lots of good stuff to check out, I think.

    I'm right in Central Phoenix. You?

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  12. We are in North Phoenix!

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