Just made some nougat: Montelimar and Honey Nougat

Interested? Go get some on Life by Chocolate. We use expensive Mexican vanilla bean and everything is made by hand. So, enjoy your nougat and live a little.

Nougat, O! the marking, O! the cutting

Here are some pictures of me cutting and marking nougat.

Here I am, the terror of Greenville. ;-)

Notice how I use the caramel cutter to mark the nougat. You have to be careful or you will rip it. You could do this with a form. I have them and I use them sometimes. Sometimes I just use the cutter as a gig. And sometimes I cut one perfect nougat and just use that.

Here's a detail.

The hardest part of making any confection, pies, cake, you name it is the cutting. That's what I was taught and that's why I try to get Kim to cut all the pies and cake. She's a wizard. However, I have to cut my own nougat. I do all right. ;-)

Oh, the agony of the cutting.

And a detail of cutting.




And speaking of nougat, Tip Top Country Store has a great picture of me up on their website. Kim took these pictures, by the way. Nice job, honey (nougat)! ;-) I took the top picture of the nougats. Hard to do a white on white shot. Kim suggested we use a colored background for the Tower 'o Nougat you see here.

By the way, I wouldn't work like this normally. This was a little contrived for the shot for the blog. Notice the caramel cutter and other things that are taking up space and are in the way. So, don't do as i blog. I wanted to show the accoutrement as I was working.

Making Nougat

We made some honey nougat today. This is a soft nougat and is quite good. However, the recipe is my own and I have decided not to publish it. However, I will give you a very standard nougat recipe. Very nice. It's a great almond nougat. You can make this soft or you can make this hard. The hard one you have to break into irregular pieces and the soft one you have to cut into squares. And whatever you do, do not make this in a humid place and do not store it in a humid place. Keep it dry and cool.

Dried Egg Whites .5 oz
Sugar 2 oz
Fresh egg whites 3.5 oz
Almonds, whole blanched, and toasted 39 oz.
Honey 16 oz (I use great local honey in mine)
Sugar 26 oz
Water 7 oz
1 vanilla bean
Glucose 8 oz
cocoa butter, melted 1.5 oz

Scale (measure out) all your ingredients.

Mix the first two ingredients with a whisk or in the mixer with a whisk. i would use a large mixer to do this and never do it by hand. It's too difficult. I have a large mixer. And let sit. Just a quick whisking. Do not whip at this stage.



Toast the almonds for 15 minutes at 300 F. Keep warm in a bowl at 200 F until needed.



Boil the honey and then keep warm.



Mix the sugar, water, vanilla bean and glucose and heat. I stir occasionally to keep it from burning. You must mix this well before you heat it.



See! We do this all by hand in small batches.

When the sugar mixture gets to 150C, start the mixer going on high. Then add honey to the sugar solution. (If you want it softer, add honey at 155C.) When the sugar syrup hits 155C, take it off the burner and gently but quickly but a very thin stream, avoiding the beaters, pour it into the egg whites as you whip. DO NOT COLLAPSE YOUR EGG WHITES! IF YOU DO, MAKE ICE CREAM.

Next, use a blow torch to heat the nougat for two minutes. DO NOT STOP MOVING THE TORCH EVEN FOR A SECOND OR YOU WILL BURN THE NOUGAT.

Now, add the melted cocoa butter and use the blow torch for 1 minute. This will take out even more water. Whisk until the eggs are smooth again. The cocoa butter will make it break. Just keep going until it is smooth. Use the torch sparingly.

Now, fold this into the almonds and divide into two or three parts. If you want, you can put this nougat onto rice paper. A nice wafer paper is great. You can also fashion it into a block and cut it and wrap it in plastic wrap. If you make the hard version, a torrone, then you can't cut it but must break it into chunks.

Rolling out the nougat is tricky and has to be done quickly. If you don't use the torch sparingly after the cocoa butter, you will have problems.



Here's Nancy rolling out the nougat. I was taking pictures, so we were a little slow on rolling out the nougat. I make a nougat that is about 1/3 to 1/2 inch think. You could make it much thicker if you want. I prefer nice human bites.

As you can see, this isn't easy. But do not despair, rather get your nougat at Life by Chocolate.