I need to have What by When?!

For the past few months, I've been talking to friends about having a "Cocoa and Cocktails" evening at either Island Creek or Drink.  Both of these bars have fantastic bartenders with amazing palates who can do drink pairings.  Unfortunately, the summer humidity has been giving me some problems with chocolate.  Chocolate and water get along together about as well as, well, most cats and water.  On Saturday I had plans with a friend of mine, and when I checked in to see what the plans were, he said that he thought I was going to bring chocolates down to Drink.  Eep!

I had about six hours.  Truffles were absolutely out of the question, as the ganache needs to set overnight.  My friend doesn't like coconut or peanut butter, so that cut out a few other options.  Caramel would take too long, and I couldn't think of any flavors of buttercream I wanted to make at the time. I also didn't want to break out any of my "good" chocolate, in case it just seized up.  

One of my favorite bartenders just got engaged, and I also know that both she and her fiancee love a good sazerac cocktail.  A sazerac contains essentially cognac, rye, absinthe, Peychaud's bitters, simple syrup, and a lemon twist.  It has a very rich, round flavor to it, that really wants to play well with chocolate.  I've tried a few versions of a sazerac truffle so far, with some success, but I hadn't really nailed it yet.  But the drink itself is also a gorgeous red color.  I wanted to giver them a little engagement present.

So I tried making sazerac hard candy.  I mixed up the cocktail with no ice or extra water, and no simple syrup.  To keep the liquid balance with the candy, I cut an equal amount of water out of the sugar syrup that I had to cook down.  It really wasn't difficult, other than I had to control the urge to stir the mixture.  I don't know if developing sugar crystals when making hard candy is important, but I didn't want to risk it.

I broke in my Lego people silicon mold, and also tried the truffle mold, then spread the rest out on a piece of parchment paper to make cracked candy.  Other than getting a drop of 300 degree sugar syrup on my thumb, the initial preparation went fairly well.  As a note, I wouldn't recommend that.  300 degrees is rather hot, and creates an impressive blister.

I knew that she was also a fan of the 20th Century gummy candy, so I made up a batch of that too, now that I can do that one fairly well.  To keep the chocolating to a minimum, and I did some chocolate covered cherries, and some s'mores.  Both of those I know for a fact play well with cocktails, and can be thrown together pretty quickly.  I was right to worry about the chocolate.  It was definitely not my prettiest work.  The flavors were good, and we were going to be in a dark bar, so it worked.  But I am glad that I didn't try to do anything fancy.

The flavor on the sazerac candy turned out nicely, although a little subtle.  I would highly recommend the silicon molds for that, it was super easy.  The truffle mold was a little more of a challenge, as I had missed the recommendation to oil it first.  I had a bit of a challenge to unmold those, but it's a good lesson for next time.