This week I decided to try my hand at making candy! I wanted to make saltwater taffy, to be exact. I have never made taffy or any sort of candy before, so I was not sure how the experiment would go. Also, I was unable to find a vegan-specific recipe, so I adapted my concoction from: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/recipe-taffy.html . I bought some vegetable glycerin (and now need to find a use for the rest of the bottle!), orange flavouring (because the rest of my family objected to almond extract), and substituted coconut oil for the butter. I did not use food colouring, because I could not find any that a) had no questionable ingredients (possibly animal-derived) and b) did not cost an arm and a leg. I mixed all the ingredients, and began boiling them... and boiling them... and boiling them. I had to heat the mixture to 270F, and at one point made the mistake of sampling some with a spoon while it was still hot (ouch!). All told, boiling the mixture to the right temperature took about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, I checked on it at about 35 minutes, and it was almost 300F. I poured the mixture onto a greased baking sheet, but unfortunately it cooled to a solid too hard to pull for taffy, as the picture below shows. Luckily, once I smoothed it back out and let it cool some more, I could smash it to make pieces of orange brittle. My willing human test subject and I thought it was delicious, even though it couldn't be classified as taffy.
I also made gluten-free brownies as a snack for one of my classes, but since I didn't have gluten-free flour, I bought a mix. The mix called for eggs and butter, which I substituted with Ener-G egg replacer and coconut oil. They were well-received by the class, but I won't count them for the purposes of this project because it wasn't really homemade. I think I may be becoming a baking snob!
As this project winds down, I will take a second stab at some of my less successful creations, to see if what I have learned can help me improve them.
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