Archive for March, 2014

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Rhubarb

Filed in Blog by on 23rd March 2014 0 Comments • views: 2395

Being a chocolatier, I feel like I ought to write about Mothers Day or about Easter, but this week I am inspired to write about Rhubarb…. yes – Rhubarb!

I just love it. How did I not know this sooner?! I used to enjoy the odd rhubarb crumble but never really thought beyond that. Then a couple of summers ago I discovered pink lemonade – yum yum! Did you know pink lemonade is made with rhubarb?

Anyway, a lovely customer of ours mentioned rhubarb and brought some to us at the last Liverpool Food and Drink Festival (Thanks Johanna!).  The idea was to candy it, but unfortunately my candying skills didn’t really work so we left it on the back burner (not literally).

I forgot about it for a while and then saw a tweet from Claremont Farm saying fresh Rhubarb in stock. So when I went in to deliver some chocs last week I picked up some Rhubarb.

It looks quite innocent, but I think the leaves are poisonous?

I candied it successfully this time – Hurrah!!  – then proceeded to use it in our chocolate.

If you would like to have a go at candying Rhubarb (and I really would urge you to – it’s so brilliant) – here’s how:

Ingredients:

6 stalks of Rhubarb

225g Caster Sugar (Plus 25g extra for later)

3 tablespoons of water

Method:

    1. Preheat oven to about 120 degrees C / Gas mark 1
    2. Chop the rhubarb into thin strips of about 6 inches or so (I got bored with doing them the same size and played around a bit, but it is better to have them all about the same size – they will then dry out evenly)
    3. Place the sugar and water in a pan and heat .
    4. Gently stir until all of the sugar has dissolved
    5. Take the pan off the heat and throw in the rhubarb – give it a mix so that all of the rhubarb is coated in the sugar syrup.
    6. Leave for half hour. (In this time you could be preparing your parchment paper on the baking trays … or having a cup of tea)
    7. Take the rhubarb out and place onto baking trays lined with parchment paper. Make sure none of the pieces are touching each other.
    8. You will be left with liquid that is a mixture of sugar syrup and rhubarb. It tastes delicious. Not sure what to do with the rhubarb syrup yet – seems a shame to bin it – so let me know if you come up with an idea!
    9. Place trays in oven for an hour and then check – if the rhubarb isn’t as dry as you want it leave for another 10 mins – remove rhubarb and place in the caster sugar that you had saved
    10. Once cooled, place in an airtight container.

Hope this works for you – let me know how you get on!

PS – we have got easter eggs and mothers day treats for sale at our pop up shop in 12 Princes Parade on Friday 28th March as well as our online shop!

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