Baking Bouchon - Recipe 83: Peppermint Patties

These are quite possibly the worst thing I've made all year.  I can't blame Thomas Keller entirely, although I find it entirely unrealistic to think that regular people should be expected to make these successfully.

There are all sorts of weird ingredients in these things and some of them are labeled "optional" which means I did not go out and buy Fondax or Invertase (?????) to use a tiny amount of them in this treat.  I also did not go out and buy Trimoline or Pouring/Icing Fondant because I can't find Trimoline anywhere and read that I could substitute corn syrup and I can't figure out what Pouring/Icing Fondant it.  I think its fondant that is really thin and therefore, pourable, but last time a recipe called for it I used this dry fondant and re-hydrated it which worked fine. I shouldn't have been surprised that this recipe didn't turn out - two omissions and two substitutions are not a recipe for success.

This recipe requires a sugar syrup that is mixed with the fondant and a little bit of peppermint oil.  The mixture is poured into a silcone mold and hardens into a little disk.

I had trouble finding peppermint oil in my local stores.  I thought I found it at Whole Foods.  When buying it I picked up the smallest bottle I could find and when I went to check out it wouldn't scan at the register.  The cashier was super nice and just stuck it in my bag.  When I got home I noticed two things.  (1) the bottle says "tester" on it - no wonder it wouldn't scan.  (2) it says "not for internal use" on it.  So, it appears that I bought peppermint essential oil that people use for all that holistic business and not for eating.  So, after all that I still had to order food grade peppermint oil online.

That's not the only trouble I ran into.  Because I only have one silicone mold, the recipe states that you should keep the remaining mixture warm over low heat and work in batches to create the little disks.  For some reason, the first batch of disks are the only ones that set up well.  The second batch did eventually but I had to refrigerate them to get them to harden.  Those ended up being super grainy.  I threw the rest away.

I did go ahead and cover everything that eventually hardened in chocolate but I bit into one of them and got a mouthful of grainy, pepperminty sugar and spit it out.  It was terrible.  I was like chewing a mouthful of sugar and gum at the same time.  Even chocolate couldn't save it.

I didn't even made CA try these and I certainly didn't torture either of our coworkers with them.

Enjoy!
Julie