If we want a more equal Christmas and that the usual thing does not happen -that the brown of preparing lunches or dinners falls entirely on mothers and aunts-, it is necessary to distribute the tasks. And if you still don’t know how to collaborate this year, we have a proposal for you: a sweet that will make you look like a magician king, that you can prepare without having great knowledge of confectionery and that everyone will like, because it has that ingredient for everyone the public known as chocolate.
Our edible Christmas tree is signed by Puerto Rican Antonio Bachour, winner of the award for the best pastry chef in the world at The Best Chefs Awards in 2022. In addition to white chocolate (or black, if you prefer) it has almonds, pistachios and raspberries. It’s not difficult, but you will need some star-shaped cookie cutters in different sizes, which are easily found in kitchen supply stores or In Internet. If you want the chocolate to be shiny, you will have to temper it, for which it is convenient to have a kitchen thermometer. Bachour himself teaches you how to do it all in the video above.
CHRISTMAS TREE OF CHOCOLATE AND NUTS BY ANTONIO BACHOUR
Ingredients
Syrup
- 125g of sugar
- 40 mineral water
- 15g honey
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Tree
- 400 g of almonds in sticks
- 75g pistachios
- 25 g freeze-dried raspberry flakes
- 350 g white chocolate 35% cocoa (or dark, if preferred)
- Some more chocolate to glue the stars
- Powdered sugar
Preparation
- Mix the sugar, water, honey and lemon juice from the syrup in a saucepan and heat it up. When it boils and the sugar dissolves, remove from heat and let cool.
- Bathe the almonds and pistachios in the syrup and spread them on a baking tray covered with a silicone mat or baking paper.
- Bake at 160 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.
- To make the chocolate shiny, it must be tempered: melt it in the microwave until it reaches about 45 degrees, then lower the temperature to about 26-27 degrees (room temperature), and then return it to the microwave for a few seconds to raise it to about 28- 29 (if dark chocolate is used, the temperature should drop to 28-29 degrees, and then rise to 30-31).
- Mix the chocolate vigorously with the caramelized nuts and the freeze-dried raspberry.
- Cover some flat trays with baking paper. Fill star-shaped molds of different sizes on the tray, and let stand for 1 hour or until the chocolate solidifies.
- Unmold the stars and glue them one on top of the other with more melted white chocolate (see video). Sprinkle with a little icing sugar.
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