Sunday, October 26, 2008

October 18-19, 2008: Cherry slice experiment II: the next hypothesis

   
You know the Simpsons episode where Lisa becomes vegetarian and Homer starts a catchy conga line with the chant "You don't win friends with salad!"? Totally not true. On this Sunday, Michael and I made a whole bunch of new friends over the most impressive array of salads I've ever seen or eaten. We'd been invited to a vegan potluck, where we met many of Melbourne's vegan bloggers (Lisa, Kristy & Toby, Buttons, Miss T & Philippa) for the first time and many other cool peeps besides (including Emily from Aduki)! For more thorough write-ups of the event, check out these posts by Lisa, Kristy, Miss T and Philippa. Non-salad food highlights for me were Miss T's white bean pesto & asparagus tart and Kristy's ice-cream sandwiches. After my own recent foray into ice cream sandwiches, I'd like to think it was a case of great minds thinking alike, but my mind had never conceived the wonder that is peanut butter caramel! Wow.

Predictably enough, I hoped to charm the crowds with sweets. In particular, I embarked upon my second round of cherry slice experiments. Having identified the dried royal cherry as my favourite manifestation of the fruit, I went about soaking it in different liquids, hoping to find something that would allow the cherries to meld better with that white, crumbly coconut. In addition, I utterly confounded my experiment by topping the slice with a different kind of chocolate to my previous experiment. (Bad scientist. Bad bad scientist.) The Lindt 70% of slices past is short on sweetness, and I replaced it with Tropical Source choc chips to great effect. Let's hope it didn't interact with those soaking liquids! Here are the candidates...


   
1 Plain. As I previously noted, this version is tasty but doesn't provide a great meld - the coconut barely takes on any cherry colour and is quite crumbly.


   
2 Sugar syrup. Even after an hour of soaking, this syrup took on only the barest hint of cherry colour. It did provide some nice extra binding and a shot of extra sweetness.


   
3 Apple juice. The juice quickly acquired a distinct pink tinge, providing a little extra binding for the coconut, though not as much as the sugar syrup.


   
4 Black cherry syrup. I bought a Saba brand cordial from Medditeranean Wholesalers and it may well have transferred more colour and flavour to the dried fruit than the other way around! There was a hint of the ol' cough syrup about it, but it really worked for me - such vibrant colour and flavour compared to the other versions. It provides excellent binding power for the coconut, too.

I think we have a winner! Though, you know, the crust really is a bit crumbly, especially when I try to slice it up small. I can see a third suite of hypotheses forming in my mind already...

12 comments:

  1. Nice experimentation, Cindy.

    Although you seem to have made up your mind that dried cherry is king of all dried fruits - and I don't blame you - may I suggest that for your next experiment you vary the type of dried fruit used in the recipe? You might want to try cranberries, figs, dates, strawberries, goji, etc. I have recently discovered dried blueberries - called bluets here - and I would dare say that they taste even better than dried cherries.

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  2. Totally yum! But I'm gutted that I have no idea what section I tried. I think I said this in real life, but I admire your dedication to the sweet cause.

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  3. Razzcherries!!!! But I think they would be way too expensive.

    I'm so disappointed in you Cindy. All good scientists know that you only vary one variable at a time so that you can quantify the effect of each variable.

    Cherries and Kirsch always work well. I'm thinking cherries and rum might work too. Hmmmm, I feel an experiment coming on for myself. I've always loved rum and raisin, maybe I can do a rum, raisin and coconut slice. Ok I must try that.

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  4. I need clarification on the recipe.

    Can I substitute butter for Nuttelex?

    Did you use agar agar powder or can I do a one to one sub with gelatin powder?

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  5. I thought whatever you brought to the potluck was heavenly anyway, bad scientist of not! ;)

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  6. Argh, you know Kristy and Toby? I ADORE Toby, even if he did promise to come to my birthday party and then not show up..

    Small world, etc...

    I still haven't seen either of you at Safeway yet - come in and visit me soon! xox

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  7. Hi dmargster! You have a point - I'm sure there are many other dried fruits that would make a rather fine choc-coconut slice. Though dried blueberries are very tempting, the small (small) packets I've spotted locally are $12 each. I'll save that piece of inspiration up for a spendthrift day. :-)

    Thanks, Lisa! I don't usually work repeatedly at a recipe like this, it's must be the lure of the cherries. :-D

    Thanh, razzcherries were the first thing I thought of when I read dmargster's comment. :-D I recently noticed some proper raspberry cordial (not the kids' stuff) at a local shop. That might be a passable soaking liquid for dried cherries as a (still somewhat expensive) substitute. I'm not a huge rum and raisin fan but I bet that combination would work really well - I would love to see you give it a go! (Actually, Michael loves rum and raisin stuff - I'll end up making it for him if you perfect it.)

    For the recipe: you can substitute the same quantity of butter for nuttelex, it just won't be vegan any more. :-) You'll need to either soften the butter a lot before beginning or use an electric mixer.

    I used agar agar powder. I'm not in the habit of using gelatin (since it's not vegetarian) so I'm not sure if you can substitute directly or not. Consult teh internets. :-)

    Thanks, Miss T! :-)

    Hiya Lily! I actually only know K & T through their blogs, though now that I've met them in person I'm hopeful that we'll become firm friends. :-) Michael and I were in Safeway on Sunday afternoon and I looked out for you (even backtracked from the shelves specifically!) but I saw no-one matching your description round the deli - sorry. :-(

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  8. I'm so sorry Cindy - My birthday was last Friday, so I took the weekend off as my gift to myself!

    I'll be there this weekend, I PROMISE.

    xoxo

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  9. Ha, Lily, no problem - I hope you had a lovely birthday. Will actually be out of town this weekend but will continue looking out for you over the coming weeks. :-)

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  10. Hm, I'll have to try and find my favourite cherry-slice base for you to try. It works really well no matter what size pieces you cut :)

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  11. It was great to meet you both, I've been reading your blog for a little while now and it's nice to meet the people behind the screen!

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  12. I would love to see it, Maffy! Please pass it along if you do track it down. :-)

    It was great to meet you too, Philippa, even if we didn't get to chat much. I'm sure we'll run into each other again soon. :-)

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