The Candy Arts

You may be wondering what the heck candy has to do with pastry. Quite a lot, as it turns out. As anyone who’s ever watched one of those pastry competitions on the Food Network knows, candy-making techniques make up the lion’s share of what people consider pastry nowadays. It’s actually a bit irritating to old school baker types such as myself, who tend to expend less energy on what a dessert looks like, and more on what it tastes like. Not that looks aren’t important, mind you, but personally I get more jazzed about something that looks like this than something that looks like this. It may be a hangup. It may be because I lack any serious sugar-working skills (very true). Still, some degree of candy knowledge is always useful when your passion is dessert. This week’s peanut butter cup recipe is about as basic as candy gets, yet there are a few finer points that might be fun to delve into. More on that tomorrow.