Holiday Candy 2023

This year’s candy included lapsang souchong ganache and caramel, wasabi marshmallow and ginger ganache, ras el hanout walnut marzipan, tequila marshmallow and jalapeños lime ganache, balsamic vinegar marshmallow and strawberry ganache, and pernod marshmallow and sage ganache.

Fundraiser Candy

I’m on the Board of Director of a fantastic little theater company called Teatro Visión. For our annual fundraiser this year, I made candies as a thank you to our donors. Flavors were habañero lime white chocolate ganache, coffee dark chocolate & hazelnut milk chocolate ganache, chipotle pecan brittle, and ube marshmallow with candied ginger on top.

Holiday Candy 2022

This year’s candy included anise black pepper marshmallows, coffee nutmeg marshmallows, spiced cinnamon ganache, paprika cinnamon toasted almond brittle, tarragon ganache with candied grapefruit peel, ginger caramel ganache, and coconut curry black sesame ganache.

Sushi Pusheen Cake

My nephew loves sushi and he loves Pusheen, so his request for his birthday cake was Pusheen wrapped up in a California roll (otherwise known as Susheen).

The rice is marshmallow piped over top of a chocolate cookie structure. I made the Pusheen cake separately, inserted it into the middle of the rice tube, then filled in the space between the rice and the Pusheen with marzipan krab and avocado and fondant cucumber. The nori is fruit leather, painted with green food coloring. The wasabi is also marzipan and the ginger is just thinly sliced candied ginger. The base is covered with royal icing and is supposed to look like a slate serving tray.

When I made my Rainbow Unicorn Pusheen Cake and my Valkyr Pusheen Cake, they were rainbow colored inside, but the layers of the cake were still flat. This time I decided to make the inside rainbow shaped as well as rainbow colored.

Walnut Chocolates

I made these for a dear friend who was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. The filling is a brandy ganache with carmelized walnuts and a piece of spiced brandied maraschino cherry.

Holiday Candy 2021

This year, I made toasted almond cherry marzipan, pecan chipotle brittle, peppermint marshmallows, port wine marzipan, amaretto ganache, habañero dark chocolate ganache with mango white chocolate ganache, and carmelized walnuts. They all turned out well, especially the pecan chipotle brittle. I forgot I was scaling the recipe when I added the chipotle, so it was about 4 times as chipotle-y as it was supposed to be, but I think it was fortuitous because ultimately my mistake made it a more powerful eating experience.

Holiday Candy 2020

Holiday Candy 2019

Most years, I make candies to send to friends and family over the holidays. This year, I got a new great new book called Spice, so I tried a bunch of new spice combinations. Starting with the pink marshmallows in the upper left and moving down and then to the right, the flavors are: mulled wine marshmallows, tamarind garam masala marshmallows, cardamom sesame brittle, rice pudding white chocolate ganache, spiced apple caramel, spiced milk chocolate ganache, and dark chocolate mole bark.

Brain Chocolates

My friend was having brain surgery. My way of showing support was to send her brain-shaped chocolates.

Holiday Candy 2018

Flavors include coffee-chocolate squares, sesame seed brittle, crème fraîche, cinnamon-marshmallow with chocolate ganache, eggnog, and ginger-rum.

Holiday Candy 2016

Holiday Candy 2015

Flavors include  dark chocolate sunbutter cups, sunflower seed toffee and brittle, coffee chocolate disks, chocolate-covered dried cranberries, and peppermint bark.

Edible Dramaturgy: Exploring death and fetish through candy

This is a performance I did with my friend and collaborator Kristin Hunt at the Makers Exhibition at the 2015 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. It’s based on two of our previous edible dramaturgy performances, Woyzeck (2013) and Miss Julie (2014). Guests were presented parallel, five-course tasting menus that led them through Woyzeck’s increasing madness and Miss Julie’s sexual surrender through the scent, taste, and texture of the food.

The menu consisted of single peas, pea gummies, pea soda, capsaicin spun sugar, red wine gummies, black pepper conversation hearts, and pea cake balls filled with garlic marshmallow.

Breast Chocolates

My aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer. I made these to let her know I was thinking of her.

Miss Julie

My friend Kristin Hunt invited me to create aphrodisiac candy recipes for a production of Miss Julie at Northeastern Illinois University. These photos are from the production, so I didn’t make the candy myself, but they are my recipes - roasted garlic marshmallow, salted truffle caramels, red wine gummies, habanero cotton candy, and oyster white chocolate ganache. There were also black pepper conversation hearts, but that one was Kristin’s recipe, not mine. I tried to invent oyster cordial cherries, but I couldn’t get them not to be gross.

Holiday Candy 2013

More candy

Candy molds

I got new candy molds!

Eyeball Cordial Cherries

One of my personal favorite candy inventions. They squish just like a real eyeball (maybe?) when you bite into them and they taste delicious! The color of the iris distinguishes between the brandy-soaked and non-brandy soaked varieties.

Chocolate Rattlesnake Dragon

This was made as a Christmas present for my sister and her husband. The body is made of forty-seven chocolate cups with eleven different fillings, arranged randomly, so biting into each segment is an adventure, since there's no way of knowing what flavor it will be. Maybe there's some sort of gambling to be done here. Someone call Vegas. Speaking of which, I have a great idea for a restaurant in Vegas in which, for a fixed price, you get a pull on a slot machine to determine what you're going to get for dinner. The first reel could be the drink, then the appetizer, the side dish, the main course, and dessert. You might end up with lobster; you might end up with a BLT. Wouldn't that be fun?

Getting back to the dragon, the eleven filling flavors were golden sesame, ginger, citrus zest, green tea, red wine, wasabi, peanut butter, peppermint, coffee, orange, and cherry.

Why a dragon, you ask? Well, I reply, because that's what occurred to me. I had another idea first, involving a demonic Santa Claus playing God, holding up a DNA strand covered with the screaming heads of tormented elves, but I didn't think I'd have the time to do it right. It's too bad, because that would have been more Christmas themed. Maybe next year.

Initially, I was planning to make the body out of candies made in several sizes of peanut butter cup molds. This fell through because the peanut butter cup molds I ordered over the internet didn't arrive at my apartment in New York until after I left to spend Christmas at my sister's house in California. I therefore had to run around to candy supply stores looking for usable molds. What I found (at Michael's) were molds for those little chocolate cups that you're supposed to fill with mousse or raspberries. It was actually a blessing in disguise, as these worked better than the peanut butter cup molds ever would have. They're big enough to fit a good amount of filling and they're proportioned really well for snake segments. Peanut butter cup molds would have resulted in much squatter, less graceful snake. Of course, I now have a bunch of peanut butter cup molds and nothing to do with them.

The first step was to make all the fillings, except peanut butter, which comes ready made in a convenient jar. I recommend using some kind of natural peanut butter. I used Trader Joe's.

The peppermint, coffee, orange and cherry centers were made of center fondant, which I've made many times before. My recipe comes from The Practical Candymaking Cookbook, which I highly recommend, though I believe it is now out of print. The fondant is basically sugar, milk, and butter, cooked, then worked on a marble slab to get the right texture. I then flavored it with candy oils (except for the coffee, for which I used instant coffee as flavoring) and colored it with paste food colors.

The golden sesame, ginger, red wine, wasabi, citrus zest, and green tea were much more of an adventure, because instead of a recipe, all I had was a brochure from a high end New York candy store, which I got at the New York Chocolate Show. It had descriptions of the candies, but it wasn't like a real recipe. For instance, all the instruction I had for the ginger candy was, "Milk chocolate blended with gin-flavored ganache and ginger."

The golden sesame and ginger have a milk chocolate ganache base, which is made by boiling cream, pouring it over chopped milk chocolate, and whisking them together. For the golden sesame I added finely ground golden sesame seeds and a splash of brandy and for the ginger, finely chopped ginger root and a little gin. I determined the proportions by taste and then wasn't smart enough to write them down, so I won't know any more the next time I make them than I did this time.

The red wine and wasabi start with a dark chocolate ganache base, made the same way as the ganache with milk chocolate. I then added red wine and wasabi powder (because I couldn't find fresh wasabi root) to taste. Finally, the citrus zest and green tea are based on white chocolate ganache, flavored with orange zest (from my sister's own orange tree) and gin and with ground up green tea.

They all wound up tasting very good. I was particularly pleased with the ginger, red wine, and citrus zest. The only major problem I had was that the white chocolate-based flavors and, to a lesser extent, the milk chocolate-based flavors, were more liquid than is ideal for rolling truffle centers. This actually was no problem at all for this project, as I could just pour the liquid into the mold, but I was also using these ganaches to make rolled truffle centers, both for standard truffles and for the shrunken head truffles that I made Mom and Dad for Christmas. I think I could solve this problem next time by using less cream to make the initial ganache out of milk chocolate and white chocolate. See, I did learn something by making these, even if I didn't have the sense to write down my recipes.

With the fillings done, I was ready to make the chocolate cups themselves.The first step was to fill the mold with dark chocolate, and then set it in the fridge for one minute, so a thin, hard shell formed. Then I poured out the excess chocolate and set the molds back in the fridge to harden.

Once the chocolate shells had solidified, it was a simple matter to pour the fillings in and then pour another thin layer of chocolate on to seal off the top of the cup. Shaking the mold a bit helps to settle the chocolate on top into a flat surface. Then, back in the fridge they went to harden.

Now the fun part begins! It was time to begin adding the artistic details. For this, I found it best to use melted dark chocolate mixed with just a smidge of corn syrup. This gives the chocolate just a little more solidity so it holds its shape better. It also imparts to the chocolate a lovely dark sheen. The only drawback is that too much corn syrup will cause the whole batch of chocolate to seize up and become totally useless. I'll only admit to that happing to me twice

.I put a batch of this dark chocolate / corn syrup combo into a pastry bag with a #4 round tip and piped little dots of chocolate around the top and bottom of each cup. These made a nice visual division between the segments of the snake and also kept the cups from touching each other except around the perimeter, making it possible to break off a cup to eat without extensive damage to the neighboring cup.

Once those dots were dry (Another advantage to the corn syrup addition is that it makes the chocolate set up much more quickly.) I joined forty-six of the cups into twenty-three pairs, by sticking the wide ends of the two cups together. The remaining single cup was for the back of the head.

I was finally ready to arrange the snake on the gold foil covered cardboard cake circle I had designated as the snake's home. I chose to arrange the snake in a spiral, with the tail to be placed on the outside of the spiral and the head rising up from the center. This part went quickly, as it was a simple matter to stick the segments to each other and to the base with a little chocolate. I had to prop the head up on a few containers of luster dust until the chocolate that was holding it in place dried.

Next, the hard parts - the face and the tail. Actually, the tail wasn't all that hard. I made all of components of the head and tail on a piece of parchment paper, and then stuck them to the snake with a little more chocolate / corn syrup. The tail consisted simply of a series of rings of decreasing size. I believe I piped them with a #6 round tip. Once these dried, I stuck them together to form the rattle, and then stuck the whole thing onto the last segment of the body.

The head was more complicated. The basis was the same as the tail - a series of consecutively smaller rings, though these shrank in diameter more rapidly than those that formed the tail, resulting in a squat, roundhead. The holes in the center of the rings formed a mouth. I also made many whiskers of various sizes and shapes - some s-shapes, some curlicues, some simple swooshes.

Once all the components dried, I was ready to decorate the head. I started with the larger whiskers and worked my way down to the smaller details, basically making it up as I went. I was very happy with the result. While I was at it, I also reinforced many of the connections between the segments to make sure nothing came apart.

I applied the finishing touches with white chocolate - teeth, eyeballs, accents on the tips of the hair and beard, and little spikes on the rattle.

Once it was wrapped I was a little nervous about the head collapsing, but there was nothing I could do at that point (except unwrap it to double check, then rewrap it, which I only did once) but I was worried for nothing. In fact, it was quite sturdy. Unfortunately, my sister and her husband were leaving for Hawaii in two days, so they couldn't eat the dragon right away. We stuck him in fridge to await their return.