Candy Dish Blog

My friend Leroy sent me a link to an NPR article about the role of bacon in desserts. We have all heard of Pig Candy, seen and maybe even tried chocolate-covered bacon, and maybe even made our own candied bacon in the secrecy of our homes, clandestinely, before revealing the truth and wonder to our friends.

Well, I haven’t. I am the office vegetarian, so I am the one who drools when my officemates like Tori and Susan nibble away at choco-cocoa-yummy piggy bits and extol the beauty and goodness of these pig-o-licious combination. I try to be holier-than-thou, morally superior and aloof, but it’s all a ruse. The flesh may be strong but the spirit is weak. I want to try it too. Underneath this strong, rugged exterior I am a sinner at heart.

So I cannot try these recipes myself, but the NPR article has some really good-looking recipes. Please, people, try some of these at home and let me know what I am missing.

Leroy indicated that perhaps there’s more to the story. Does the bacon addition hurt confectionery? The simple answer is no. It may hurt for one batch of cookies, where you use bacon instead of chocolate chips, but then when you cover bacon with chocolate, you have already made up the difference. And honestly, you will not substitute bacon for chocolate in many cases. It just won’t happen.

I think there’s enough room at the table for candy and bacon. It was a fad in the last couple years to pair bacon and sweet stuff, especially chocolate. The sweet-salty and sweet-savory combinations opened up a whole new world to the confectionery industry. Now you can get cocoa spice rubs for meats, chocolate-covered meat and salty chocolate caramels. A few years back, these were almost unheard of, being strictly gourmet items. Now they are available to the general public.

In the end, confectionery wins in the bacon dessert mix. Bacon is still a novelty, even a fad. However, we may see bacon stand the test of time and someday look back on the late 2000’s as a time of creative bacony genius. It all may peter out. On the other hand, it may become a classic.

Chocolate Bacon by chipandandy.

Loyal readers know that I am a big fan of incorporating cocoa and chocolate into savory cooking.  My husband and I served chocolate dusted scallops as a starter and chili and cocoa-rubbed flank steak as an entrée at our wedding back in May.  When we grill red meat or pork, we often use cocoa in the marinade or as a dry rub.  Until recently, I took the easy way out and purchased pre-made cocoa rubs, but the source of those rubs seems to have gone out of business.

Thankfully, it’s really easy to make your own … and the bonus is that they make great gifts for the holidays and you can make them in advance.  Before you make your rub, buy some air tight spice containers like these magnetic tins.  

 If you start with fresh spices, the rub should last about 6 months before it starts to lose its flavor.

 Here’s the recipe:

Cocoa and Chili Spice Rub

1/4 cup coarse salt
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
3 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.

This recipe makes about a cup of rub, so adjust accordingly.  When it’s time to use your rub, the ratio is about 3 tablespoons per pound of meat (I tend to use a little more – it gets a little crunchy in an extremely pleasant way on the grill). 

As a little bonus treat for Candy Dish blog readers, I made a label that you can stick on your containers to label the spicy goodness contained within.  Print the PDF of the labels on a full size label sheet, trim with scissors or a paper cutter, and affix to your spice jars.

Steak … on the Grill by Another Pint Please

Recently I was helping my co-worker Alison (whose mom shared that awesome chocolate cake recipe with us last week) pick some items to serve at a chocolate-themed dinner party.  I shared with her the recipe for chili and cocoa marinated flank steak with chocolate merlot sauce that we featured on the blog several months ago, as well as the recipe below which we served at a media event in New York a few years ago.

This recipe has a lot of strengths and some of my favorite ingredients – rosemary, beer and a double dose of chocolate.  It’s also fairly easy to make and doesn’t take much time.  Serve it with sides of orzo and green beans almondine and you can have the whole meal on the table in less than 40 minutes.

File this one away for your holiday entertaining.

Cocoa-Dusted Beef Tenderloin in a Guinness and Dark Chocolate-Rosemary Sauce
Serves 6

Ingredients

• 3 pounds beef tenderloin, trimmed and tied, trimmings reserved
• Salt and pepper
• ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon cocoa butter or vegetable oil
• 3 shallots, peeled and sliced
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 12-ounce bottle Guinness or dark beer
• 1 large sprig rosemary
• 4 cups brown veal or beef stock
• ¼ cup chopped dark chocolate (70%)
• 1 tablespoon butter

Instructions

•  
  1. Heat oven to 400.
  2. Place a large, heave sauté pan over high heat.
  3. Season the beef filet with salt and pepper, then rub the cocoa powder over the beef.
  4. Add the cocoa butter or oil to the heated pan, and place the beef in the hot oil.
  5. Brown the beef well all over, then remove it to a rack set over a sheet pan and place in oven. Roast the beef for 15 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer registers 120. Remove from oven, cover loosely and allow the beef to rest.
  6. While the beef roasts, add the beef trimmings, shallots, celery and carrots to the pan and sauté until golden.
  7. Add the tomato paste and cook for 1 minute, then add the beer and rosemary to the pan. Bring the beer to a boil, then allow it to reduce by half its volume.
  8. Add the stock and continue to reduce the sauce until it is thickened.
  9. Strain the sauce, return it to the pan, and stir in the chocolate and butter. Taste for salt and adjust is needed.
  10. Untie the beef, slice it into 12 pieces and serve with sauce. 

Cocoa Dusted Beef Tenderloin photo courtesy of Robin,  The Girl Who Ate Everything

If you were up really early yesterday morning, you may have seen the CBS Sunday Morning feature on the Future of Candy, part of the Tomorrow Show series with Mo Rocca (who I love on NPR’s Wait, Wait – Don’t Tell Me).  In the event that you like to spend Sunday morning sleeping in, or getting ready for Sunday football, you can watch the segment on the CBS Web site.

Go ahead, watch it.  We’ll wait.

Regular readers of the Candy Dish blog have already heard most of what was discussed including the importance of flavors, the trend toward savory and the influence of global cultures on American candy. 

A student at Resident Course pours hot candy into moulds

NCA provided some of the background used to put together that story and if you watch the first half of the segment very carefully you’ll see a few shots from our Resident Course in Confectionery Technology, which we affectionately call Candy School.

That’s right.  I said Candy School.  Sorry, the course is not open the public … but if it were, would you sign up?  What would you contribute to the future of candy?

It’s Restaurant Week in Washington, DC – a chance to get out and try all those places you’ve been eager to visit since they first opened … three years ago.  Yeah,  I don’t get out much.

On Wednesday, I was so excited to visit Zengo, a DC outpost of acclaimed chef Richard Sandoval.  The meal was amazing.  It’s a Latin / Asian fusion restaurant – think sushi and ceviche, sake sangria, and empanadas and edamame.  My dining companions and I all loved our appetizers and our entrees, but let’s talk about dessert.

Specifically, let’s talk about MY dessert – which, of course, featured chocolate. 

Here’s the menu listing that first caught my attention:

MEXICAN CHOCOLATE TARTE
~ cocoa nibs / cinnamon whip / chili ancho anglaise

Uh, yeah.  I’ll try that one please.

It was delicious.  I’d go back again just for that signature dessert.

Now, regular readers of this blog know that chocolate and spice are twice as nice (and a really big trend right now).  I happened to be dining with not-so-regular readers of the blog and because it’s hard to shut me up when it comes to chocolate (and candy and gum and a whole bunch of other topics) they got an earful I’m sorry to say.

BUT, what I mainly told them about were cacao nibs because, as you can see in the picture of my excellent dessert, the tarte was covered with these pieces of nutty deliciousness.

Cacao nibs are the most intense and pure form of chocolate.  So pure, in fact, that they barely even taste like the chocolate sweets we all know.

Chocolate comes from the cacao, or cocoa, tree.  These trees grow in a very small region of the world and require lots of care and attention.  The fruit of the tree is a cocoa pod.  These pods look like footballs, only skinnier, and they can be all shades of yellow, orange and red.  Inside the pod is a white pulp that covers the cocoa bean.  To make chocolate the beans are fermented, roasted, and cracked (or winnowed).  At the very center of the bean is the cacao nib – the source of all things chocolate. 

Usually the nibs are ground into a smooth liquid state as the first step in making eating chocolate, but the nibs can actually be enjoyed on their own.  At NCA we like to sprinkle them on salads, and Jacques Torres taught us how to make a lovely salmon with cacao nibs.  In fact, you can even watch a video of Jacques and his beautiful wife, Hasty, discussing the dish on our Web site.

So I was very pleased to see them adorn the top of my dessert last night.  They add a wonderful crunch and are versatile enough to be used in sweet and savory dishes.  You can often find them in gourmet speciality stores or, to save yourself the hassle of running around town, you can buy them on Amazon (really, what CAN’T you buy on Amazon?).

Here are my top suggestions for quick ways to incorporate cacao nibs into your cooking:

1. Use them to decorate the top of a serving of chocolate mousse or chocolate parfait
2. Sprinkle them into a green salad with mandarin oranges, red onions and a light vinaigrette
3. Add them to your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe
4. Add a small amount to your homemade or store-bought trail mix

Let me start off by saying that I don’t like mushrooms.  It’s a sore point in my marriage, but then again my husband doesn’t like pickles so we all have our flaws (perhaps we need the help of Reggie, the Marriage Saver).  Nonetheless, I recently mentioned mushrooms in a series of radio interviews about the future of candy, and mushrooms may feature more prominently than you might imagine.

Susan S. told you that we had some media folks in the office a couple of weeks ago to talk about trends in chocolate and confectionery.  We actually had two reasons to assemble this group of folks.  The first was that we came back from the ALL CANDY EXPO with lots of information about what is happening in confectionery RIGHT NOW.  The second reason is that we just completed a big survey to find out what’s going to happen with candy and chocolate in the next three to five years. 

Before we had the media folks in, I participated in about 25 radio interviews around the country to talk about the future of candy. Here’s what I had to say:

Click to play

Yup.  You heard me.  Chocolate and mushroom.  I’ll probably pass on that one, but I love chocolate and cheese AND chocolate and bacon. My love for salt and chocolate is well documented on the blog here and here and even on the Author’s Page. I’m mildly obsessed.

But chocolate is only part of the story.  Flavors are going to have a major impact on every level of the confectionery industry.  The reporters who came to the luncheon sampled Chili Spiced Mango from Trader Joe’s and then sampled the new Chili Mango Jelly Belly.  They tried dried, candied ginger and then sampled Naughty Ginger, a ginger and lemon lollipop from Das Foods.  If you think these flavors seem to have an international influence, you’re right.  That’s another major trend coming down the pike.

Experts overwhelmingly agreed that products with a focus on health would be the driving force in product innovation in the years ahead.  That means we can look for more super fruits in our candy flavors, more calorie and portion control packaging, less sugar, lower calories and the addition of vitamins and minerals like Vitamin C and calcium.

What do you think the future of candy holds?  Is bacon a trend, or a fad?  What about salt?  How about in the health arena?  What would you like to see candy makers do more 0f? 

Yesterday we invited Washington, DC area food and lifestyle reporters to see our new Georgetown offices, share a meal with us and exchange information about trends in candy, chocolate, cocoa and gum.

There was much conversation around our community table. The chocolate and cocoa related conversation went like this:

• Top rated entree of the day: Cocoa, rosemary and soy marinated tenderloin of beef. This dish was proof that cocoa is a welcome addition to the entire dinner table, not just dessert.
• Chocolate is America’s favorite flavor (vanilla is #2) with Americans relatively evenly split between a love for dark or milk chocolate.
• Sweet and savory combinations are mighty fine. We sampled bacon, brie and chipotle filled truffles–one of each.
• Interested pairings are making their mark, such as chili, lavender, sesame, green tea infused chocolates.
• Chocolate and cocoa are international foods. Cocoa was celebrated by the ancient Mayans over 2000 years ago. Cocoa trees are grown in small communities in very hot humid climates near the Equator in West Africa, Asia and Latin America. Chocolate or cocoa are immensely popular in the Americas, nearly all European countries and there is growing interest in Asia where green tea and chocolate are popular combinations.
• Cocoa trees are delicate, requiring the loving care of the farm families who tend them. They are susceptible to pests and diseases and need careful pruning and constant attention to ensure a healthy tree. Most cocoa farm families grow other crops, such as hardwood trees, bananas, other fruits, cassava and plaintain to provide shade for the cocoa trees as well as a year round income for the families, since there are only two cocoa harvests a year.
• Definitive research shows that cocoa butter, the natural fat in the cocoa bean, does not raise blood cholesterol levels in the body. (Cocoa beans, by the way, are a fruit and grow inside pods shaped like footballs from the trunks of cocoa trees.)
• Chocolate, in particular dark chocolate, and cocoa contain flavanols, a type of antioxidant which can affect good cardiovascular health.
• Our experts predict that additional research will show a positive effect on blood pressure and mood (we don’t really need the experts to tell us chocolate makes us happy!).
• The antioxidant properties of the cocoa bean make it a beneficial addition to many skin and beauty care products such as lotion, anti-aging creams, soaps and shampoos.

We had a great time and hope our guests did, too. We hope some of you will be able to join us at our table in the future. In the meantime we know that really, almost everyone is a chocolate expert. What chocolate trends are you willing to predict?