Baking Bouchon - Recipe 86: Nougat aux Fruits

Can you see my skepticism from there?  There's nothing about these things that I should like.  They're pretty much named after dried fruit.

But (gasp) I like them!  Maybe because the name says fruits, there are only a few dried cranberries in here (the least offensive of the dried fruits) but it's really all about the nougat.

Someone asked me what nougat is and I had a hard time describing it to them.  I settled on "the stuff inside of a Snickers bar - not the caramel or chocolate or nuts, the other stuff."  It's the best I can do.

Nougat is kind of cool.  It's like making marshmallows where you pour hot syrup into egg whites and beat the crap out of it, however this nougat also has a honey-based syrup in it which gives it a much more complex flavor than a regular old marshmallow.  Plus it has melted cocoa butter in it which makes it super rich.

While the nougat is still hot, you mix in some pistachios, almonds and dried cranberries. 

My sugar creations don't always set up exactly like they're supposed to, so I was very happy when I made my first cut and it held together and you could see the pretty nuts and cranberries in there.  The green pistachios are my favorite.  That combined with the red cranberries was like Christmas.

I brought this to work and someone came up to me and said "You made Gaz."

I had no idea what she was talking about but apparently there is a Persian dessert named Gaz which is just like this French dessert.  Go figure.  I'm sure at some point in history someone conquered someone else and taught them to make this stuff but I don't know much about history.  I can hardly keep up with the present.

I took way too many pictures of this stuff.

This wasn't a treat for everyone - the ones I brought to work didn't disappear as fast as most of my treats and CA's coworkers were pretty skeptical.

However, I was surprised that I found Nougat aux Fruits to be pretty delicious and strangely addicting.  I kept going back for more trying to figure out exactly why I liked it so much.  For me, I think it was the honey.

Enjoy!
Julie