What is a person to do when they make a recipe and realize they ended up with way way too much leftover icing? My usual go-to method in this situation is to put it in my coffee for a week or so until it’s used up (makes for some surprisingly delicious and strange flavour combinations, so don’t knock it ’til you try it! Weirdly, of the literally dozens of times I’ve done this, the lemon icing was hands down the best combination with coffee. It made me want to get all up in Starbucks’ grill and insist they get on creating a lemon meringue pie latte stat! Seriously, it was amazing. Memories…what was I talking about again?).
Now mixing frosting into your coffee is all fine and good when you end up with like a quarter cup of icing. However, this time around, I ended up with more like 2-3 cups worth. As much as I wanted to be inundating my coffee with cherry buttercream for the next 6 months (slight exaggeration, but not by much), I thought I should try and think of another way to use it up (throwing it out would be just wrong. Just so, so wrong. It was way too delicious for that. Why would you even suggest such heresy?!! Just leave now, I can’t…I just can’t even look at you right now 😉 ). I mean, I was most definitely finding myself eating it out of the container with a spoon. So…it probably wouldn’t last too long anyway if I kept that up 😉 , but I also thought I should share the wealth/ sweetness and find other ways of repurposing said deliciousness.
Since the buttercream was softer than I would’ve typically made it because it had been a cake filling and not used as actual frosting, and I didn’t want to add more sugar to this (in fact, if I was recycling this into another dessert where it would be a star player, I’d probably want it slightly less sweet), what was I to do? I put my thinking cap on (which looks like this if you’re interested:
…because anyone who can solve time travel is clearly on to something and who am I to think I can come up with a better design for innovation creation headgear? Also, when I’m looking for more creative style inspiration, I put this one on:
😉 )
And what did I come up with you ask? I remembered that I owned these chocolate moulds that I haven’t used in a bazillion years (don’t I look good for my age? 😉 ), and what better way to use this up then by making fancy bonbons? As I said though, I didn’t want it crazy sweet, and also, I wanted something slightly more complex in flavour. What goes well with Jelly folks? C’mon now, say it with me! Peanut butter!!!!!
So, to tone down the sweetness and amp up the la-di-da snobbery of these, I created a 3 layer chocolate of deliciousness. A layer of cherry buttercream, then a layer of peanut butter mixed with chocolate balsamic vinegar, then more cherry buttercream, all enrobed (I said they were snobby chocolates) in dark chocolate and topped up with a little white chocolate for extra zazz.
Ok, I will freely admit that these photos look terrible. That middle looks horrendous here, but that’s just because I was dumb and tried to cut this with a knife after they had been sitting outside of the fridge on a super hot day in a room with no air-conditioning. If you don’t follow my example here, your results will be much less visually atrocious.
As the British would say – “Keep Sweet and Candy On” (or something like that right? 😉 )
Yield:Â 2 dozen candies (depending on the size of mould used)
Ingredients
Cherry Filling:
- 2 tablespoons cherry jam
- 2 tablespoons vegan cream cheese
- 1/4 cup vegan butter
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup icing sugar
Peanut Butter Balsamic Filling:
- 2 tablespoons peanut butter
- 2 teaspoons chocolate balsamic
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 2-3 tablespoons peanut butter powder
- 3/4 cups chocolate (chips or regular chocolate. Ideally you’ll want to temper the chocolate so you get the shiny coating that won’t “sweat” or melt at room temperature, but feel free to be lazy and not do that, but maybe store these in the refrigerator
- Candy mould
Directions
- With a clean and dry candy mould, coat inside of mould with melted/tempered chocolate (you can find instructions on how to do this here). Place mould in the refrigerator to allow chocolate to set.
- Combine 1/2 cup cherry jam , cream cheese, butter and vanilla and mix until combined. Slowly add in icing sugar until it’s your desired thickness. Doesn’t need to be as thick as frosting, but you don’t want it to be too liquidy (so basically add to your desired level of sweetness and consistency). Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.
- In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients for the peanut butter balsamic filling.
- Remove mold and the cherry filling from the refrigerator. Place a small dollop/layer of cherry filling (just enough to fill a little less than a third of the candy). Place similar size dollop of peanut butter filling on top, then a final layer of cherry filling. Make sure not to fill right to the top as you need a millimeter or two of space for the final layer of chocolate.
- Cover with a layer of tempered chocolate, smoothing over mould with either a butter knife or an offset spatula.
- Place mold in refrigerator until set and remove from mould. I had a couple that wouldn’t come out easily, so I just slammed the mould really hard on my counter and it worked like a charm (so don’t be afraid to be a bit rough…just not too rough since you don’t want them to break. Think maybe just 25 shades of grey 😉 ).
- If used tempered chocolate, store in an airtight container at room temperature, otherwise store in the refrigerator.
These were amazing!!!
by Brenda June 6, 2017 at 04 : 39Thanks! Glad you liked them 🙂
by admin June 6, 2017 at 04 : 59I’m going to finally try this recipe next week! So excited 🙂
by Hannah Flack September 9, 2020 at 02 : 42