Turning Scraps into Treasures
There is waste and then there is waste. Perhaps you can relate based on your own kitchen experience. Scraps of pie dough in the oven with butter and sugar? Discovery of sauteed beet root greens? In the Vosges Haut-Chocolat kitchen things melt, break, and get trimmed. Yummy things that create yummy waste.
One of our most popular comfort foods, the Caramel Marshmallows were born out of desire to make a use for a yummy by-product. We make our crunchy Caramel Toffee in sheets and then coat is with milk chocolate and then sprinkle on walnuts and pecans. In order to sell bite-sized portions, we then break the toffee into chunks. When breaking this coated toffee, a small rain shower of crumbled nuts touched with chocolate that haven’t fully secured to the toffee. At first, we all took turns bringing home bags of toffee crumble, as we called it, to sprinkle over ice cream. But, as production grew, we had more crumble than we could use.
A brainstorm session led to the idea of marshmallows, then we considered caramel and then of course… I had to coat it all in chocolate. Perched proudly on top, crowning our new Caramel Marshmallow creations, the leftover toffee crumble found its day in the sun.
The top photograph showing snacks of buttery, soft fresh caramel is a common one in our kitchen when we make our Exotic Caramels and Wink of the Rabbit Caramels. Batches are made in our old copper kettle (never more than 120 pounds at a time.)
We then pour the caramel on trays to cool. After it is room temperature, we measure the caramels and cut them by hand, one-by-one into a perfect bite-sized morsel. The by-product of our equally sized cut caramels is a pile of edges. Our tray of caramels is brought to the enrober where the bites go under a chocolate waterfall, coating them in either milk or dark chocolate. While the chocolate is still wet, we sprinkle freshly ground spices or organic nuts on top.
So, we find our way to my conundrum. These piles of caramel scraps call to me. Some are eaten of course. But do they have a path to better ending? Might they be as lucky as the toffee crumble and find their day in the sun? What would YOU do with these caramel scraps?
Anxiously awaiting your ideas,
Katrina
I like the idea of caramel “awareness ribbons” and the folded juncture is held together with balsamic vinegar “glue”. Or caramel “sheets” with balsamic “dots”!
Could they be matched up with bacon slices, then coated together with chocolate? Heck, I’d buy ‘em as is and gobble ‘em up, too.
I think it would be pretty awesome to dip them in some chocolate and shape them a bit to resemble Medusa’s fashionable hair do! Or simply dipped in a bit o’ chocolate on the ends works fine, too. Although the balsamic addition as mentioned above sounds tempting!
I would chop it and make sweet rolls with it and melt some down and make a sauce out of it, oh I can see them now, so yummy!
mmmmmmmmmmmm Vanilla Bean ice cream with the added the yummy scraps and a swirl of thick Balsamic Vinegar.