Candy

Not being a huge candy-lover, I wasn't thrilled when I saw that the Daring Baker's challenge would center around this idea. However, I was quickly captured by the idea of making and flavoring my own truffles.

The August 2011 Daring Bakers' Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsely, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

What was especially fun about this challenge, is that I had all the ingredients ready to go. It just required a little creativity of opening my pantry doors and perusing the garden for some delicious treats! Part of the requirement of this challenge was to learn how to "temper" chocolate, which is what makes that smooth and almost shiny exterior of the chocolates you can buy from a chocolate shop. What I had on hand was the Trader Joe's Pound-Plus Bar in Dark Chocolate, and I was very pleased with the result.

The truffle flavors you will find pictured here are: Mango, mint and lemon dark chocolate and orange cardamom dark chocolate:

I also tried my hand at pate de fruit, but would consider it fairly unsuccessful. The flavor of these little guys is lemon cucumber/melon:

If you want to make some delicious truffles, give this recipe a try.