Call me crazy, need help with candy making
 

from Karen or anyone who can help!

I make my own chocolate bars using really good chocolate and cocoa butter. Now that I have found a way to temper chocolate, I'd like to try my hand at filled chocolates, but I an not sure what to use instead of the sugary fondant found in high carb candies.

I did make some using the Lucky Leaf cherry pie filling sweetened with Splenda and they were ok, but not quite right.

My husband lost thiry pounds on Atkins and is now a dedicated low carber on Maintenance. I'm still on OWL, but even I like a chocolate treat now and then. We have no problem living without potatoes, rice, pasta, and bread, but we really like chocolate.

So if anyone can think of a good substitute for fondant, please help!!!

Karla

P.S. (And if I can figure out how to make those cherry cordials DH loves, I have of much better chance of talking him into that chocolate tempering machine I want :lol: )

My first attempt would be whey protein concentrate - not isolate - mixed with cream and flavoured with nut butters, extracts, etc.

Karen

Thanks, Karen, I'll give it a try. I have not tried whey protein concentrate, which I have avoided simply because I did some baking following recipes in a book on low carb baking that all called for soy protein isolate and we hated them; the texture was very wierd and spongy and not in a good way. Since then I have sort of lumped together all products like soy protein and any kind of whey and avoided them. Which isn't fair, so now I have an excuse to try it.

I'll do some experimenting next week and post the results.

Karla

:lol:

That's what I thought too until I started to understand what applications they were useful in. There were lots of failed experiments until I got to that point.

Karen

Karen, you're a genius! I found whey protein concentrate today and tried making the filling. I started with 1 tablespoon of the whey and added cream, 1 teaspoon at a time until it was the right consistency (it took 6 teaspoons), then added a little sweetener and some apricot flavoring. I tastes great and I think the carb count for the filled chocolates will be doable: the whey has 9 grams in one tablespoon and the cream has .4 per tablespoon, so the small amount of filling I made has 9.8 grams of carbs and is probably enough to fill 5 candies, which makes 1.9 each.

The chocolate itself has very few carbs; for 6 ounces of the finished chocolate I use 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate and 4 ounces of cocoa butter, so six ounces of finished chocolate has 8 grams of carbs and makes a ton of little chocolates. Well, let's say it makes 30 (because I can't remember exactly, but 30 is probably close), so each candy has .26, plus 1.9 for the filling, which makes each filled chocolate 2.16 grams of carbs!!!

Of course, these are not the kind of thing you'd make every day, but once in awhile you could have a couple a day without causing any problem, assuming you can stop at two, that is. :) The occasional low carb chocolate treat is the only thing standing between me and a wild Belgian chocolate binge followed by a Godiva hangover and horrible guilt! :lol:

Thank you very much for your help, Karen; my husband will be very happy as soon as he tastes this stuff!

Karla

What kinds of applications are those? Would you use them in combination with things like nut flours, or what?

Karla

Would you use them in combination with things like nut flours, or what?
Yep! Nut flours and wheat gluten. If you use it straight, in baking, it's ghastly!

Karen

That makes sense, but I haven't tried using wheat gluten because I'm pretty sure my DH has a wheat allergy; the only time he had a reflux problem since we've been eating LC was on a trip to France and we were eating croissants and bread for breakfast because that's all you can get there.

That's the main reason I use oat flour for things like muffins and brownies, which I don't make often. (That and the fact that we both really hate anything made with soy flour, even though I know it has so few carbs.) I mix oat flour with an equal amount of almond or other nut flour for the muffins, and the brownie recipe I converted to LC only called for 1/2 cup flour, so I just replaced that with oat flour. I also make a great pound cake using just almond flour. And that's about all I bake, especially since I am not on the trail of LC bread.

Karla

Same here. I am so not interested in bread. :)

Try subbing 1/4 to 1/3 plain soy protein isolate for some of your oat flour. It'll lower the carb count a little.

Karen

Well, I may give it a try, as long as the finished product does not have that spongy texture; actually, since the oat flour is rather heavy, the protein isolate may just lighten it up a bit. Hmmmmm...

Thanks for the idea.

I haven't made any filled chocolates yet, mainly because it's so hot here at the moment, but I am looking forward to it; now I just have to figure out how to make neat looking filled candies. I have all kinds of molds, but it's going to take some practice to make the chocolate even all around inside the mold.

I find it pretty ironic that I never made candies before going low carb ;) Pre-lc it was too easy to let those nice Belgians and Swiss and places like Purdy's make them for me! :lol:

Thanks for all your advice, Karen, I appreciate the help.

Karla