Adventure #011- 3 Musketeers

My mom and cousin know that I love 3 Musketeers bars. They ask if there is anything I would like to have from home, and I almost always ask for some. There is something about the light and fluffy nougat that just speaks to my taste buds.

I received an electronic cookbook from a friend in 2008. I downloaded it, briefly looked at it and then forgot about it. Last week, while cleaning up my files, I saw the cookbook. I opened it and one of the first things I saw was a recipe for 3 Musketeers bars. I was ecstatic because I had finished my last one the week before.

The recipe calls for corn syrup (which I didn't have to make, thanks Annalyn!) sugar, chocolate, egg white, salt, and water. The sugar, corn syrup, and water are boiled until they reach the 'soft crack stage'. This part is actually quite fun. You drop some of the mixture into water and see how firm it gets. The egg whites are fluffed and the two are slowly mixed together. This sounds pretty easy in theory but it got quite messy and I can only imagine what I looked like holding the sauce pan in one hand, slowly adding the mixture into a pot and mixing with the other the whole time trying to keep the pot in place with my elbow. *Note: DON'T use plastic anything! The sugar is super hot and will melt it, as it did with my spatula. After the sugar goo has been mixed in, you add the chocolate, which I accidentally added almost double the amount I was supposed to.

This nougat gets put into the fridge for 1-2 hours and then you can coat them in chocolate to be cooled until solid. I used a mixture of milk chocolate and dark chocolate because I love the dark stuff!

While cutting the nougat, I discovered that it was really sticky and that my knife wasn't really doing much, just pulling it around. I decided to try the cheesecake trick of warming the knife up and it worked beautifully. The coating part was pretty easy, after the first couple, I learned to scrape a bit of the excess chocolate off before placing it on the wax paper.

The end result was almost perfect. They didn't quite look the same as the real thing, but they tasted fantastic! They were a little too sweet and the nougat wasn't as fluffy (probably both were a result of the extra chocolate I added). The dark chocolate on the outside was a little bit of heaven!

I served them at our Valentines Day brunch and everyone was amazed, not only that I made them, but also that it was possible to do so. I have been generous with my supply (I can afford to be now that I can make them) and handed them out to students and friends. Everyone is always a little awed that I made it. I don't know if that is a question of my skill or if it is admiration (I'll pretend it's admiration, either way.)

The verdict: Perfection in the shape of a candy bar! I am no longer dependent on my suppliers! And I can personalize the guilty pleasure, using dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate and all sorts of great things. I wonder how some vanilla would be? I'll find out next time.