Happy Inclusioncrafting Monday! If you received my email, then you know my power was out this a.m (thank you to all who dropped into the chat to check on me :) I’ve rescheduled today’s livestream, and because I’m heading out of town this week it’s pushed back (August 23 at 8am PT), Here’s the new link, and I’ll send a reminder closer to the date.
However! not going to let a little lack of electricty hold us back, right? so I drained my phone with a 20-minute Inclusioncraft discussion, where I discuss a bar idea, and my thought process. You can watch (or listen) here.
A few takeaways:
Gardens and local farms may be, not just a source of ingredients, but inspiration. Growing my own herbs, flowers, vegetables, and fruit has been a longtime source of ideas for me. My original Squirrel Stash bar arose from the !$#@ squirrels who mow down every single hazelnut on my four tree: the original creation was a collection of small bars that used seeds etc from my garden, basically whatever the squirrels missed.
Growing or sourcing “not the regular” ingredients available adds interest (value) to our work: there are hundreds of different types of pumpkins, but most grocery stores only carry one type of pumpkin seed. Anytime we intrigue folks with something new we are, in essence, giving them permission to try something new. That said, there is nothing wrong with using what’s handy! don’t stress if you don’t have access to farms/local produce. The point is that using AND making an ingredient unique to us/our own is where intention comes in.
Just because you’ve never worked with an inclusion ingredient (or haven’t seen it used by somebody else) doesn’t mean it can’t be used.
Also, just because you think it may sound funky doesn’t mean it isn’t a brilliant idea. Trust your flavor palate (and also, palette).
Think through the options and possibilities.
And now, a lesson in snackcrafting
Snackcrafted inclusions are inclusions, but they’re inclusions made specifically to use for inclusioncraft.
Crumb, pralines, brittles, toffee, crunches, meringues, honeycomb, spice-laden croutons, fruit leathers + floral leathers, candied fruits, tweaks on baked goods, and a fling with the grocery store snack + cereal aisles, wet no-can-do ingredients rendered chocolate-ready, are a few of the technique-facing approaches in the snackcrafter’s toolbelt
We can take an inclusion ingredient and change it, and we can make our own inclusions from scratch: both of these approaches are snackcrafting
Snackcrafting is technique-driven. It can give us the answer(s) and guidance when we think of an ingredient and need to figure out how we’ll use it. Some ingredients are straightforward: salt on the back of a bar, for instance. Or nuts stirred in. But what if our ingredient is a fresh blackberry?
If an ingredient is not in ideal inclusion form (like the blackberries in the video) it doesn’t mean it’s a no-go; I brainstormed what I could “do” with my lovely, luscious blackberries. Because I know I can’t stir juicy blackberries into chocolate (guiding principle: liquids and chocolate, blackberries are wet/juicy) and as I discussed in the video I wasn’t keen on making a blackberry leather, plus I don’t have a freezedryer or dehydrator, I asked Can I sneak inn the blackberry by adding blackberry juice to something else? That question led to some obvious options. Make a blackberry cake and use dried crumbs? Make “crumb” (a staple of snackcrafting, from an adapted Cristina Tosi recipe)? I arrived at the idea of making a blackberry granola: it sounded yummy, kinda fun, like a summer breakfast, or something I’d want to eat strewed onto yogurt on the porch of a cabin on vacation.
This type of snackcrafting falls into the category of Inclusions that are baked: crumb, crunch, meringue, granola
To snackcraft my granola I recalled that my favorite recipe uses oats + maple syrup + oil, which is stirred together and baked. For my bar I wanted a lot of blackberry-ness, so I put my berries in a saucepan, added a bit of cane sugar, and cooked it down into a jammy, syrupy sauce. Here’s the how-to:
Rinse and drain two cups of fresh blackberries (you could use frozen, no rinsing needed just thaw them).
Place in 2-quart saucepan over medium heat with 1/8 cup of cane sugar. I added the sugar because I wanted the berry sauce to be thick/jam-like, not just juice. Cook until thicker. No need to cool but you can do this step days ahead, and if you do, refrigerate the sauce.
I used rolled spelt flakes instead of oats, because I bought them recently from a local grain grower. Oats would be fine. Since this was a test batch, I only used ½ cup of the spelt flakes, which I measured into a bowl.
Using a small strainer over the spelt/oats, spoon some of your blackberry sauce into the strainer and press with a spoon. My idea was to get the flavorful sauce, minus the pulp and seeds. You could of course strain your sauce after making it. That said, when I was moulding the bars I had seed remorse, and wished I’d kept blackberry seeds in the sauce as a funny reminder of what eating fresh wild blackberries is actually like.
Add 1 Tablespoon of neutral cooking oil; I used sunflower. If! though I’d brainstormed a nut/seed fruit granola, I’d have matched the oil to the nut or seed (hazelnut blackberry granola would use hazelnut oil, for example). This brainstorm→experiment process is how ideas evolve.
Stir the spelt/oats well, coating them as much as possible.
Place on parchment-lined tray and bake at 250F until dry and crispy. Cool before using in chocolate.
What about the bar?
In the video I talked about wanting to use my bronze fennel in a bar, and how a white chocolate might work well. I went that direction, though I’m also planning a test batch of a fennel pollen milk chocolate. I had a small test batch of an einkorn white chocolate. Like emmer and spelt, einkorn is a type of farro an Italian term for “ancient hulled wheat.” It’s considered an “ancient grain,” and is grown locally. I love baking with it, and recently tried a batch of white chocolate made with it in lieu of oat flour. It didn’t come out as smooth as my oat milk white but I wondered if it might work in a bar with a hefty, crunchy, flavorful inclusion stirred in.
My approach when testing a new version of chocolate is to use a tried and true recipe as a template. ALL of my white chocolate versions started from a dairy white chocolate, which in turn started from a white chocolate “recipe” I found online, back in 2015. I tweaked that original by altering the fat content to reflect the whole milk powder I was using (the recipe used nonfat milk powder). I make a small batch in my smallest melanger, weigh out the %s, but begin by adding only ¼ of the milk replacer/grain/whatever I’m testing. That way I can add more as I decide. If a batch is too thick or too runny we can add/reduce the fat or add/reduce the solids. Always (always) take good notes.
I melted the chocolate, added seed at 94F, then stirred in the fennel pollen I’d collected, then the granola. After I moulded I sprinkled more granola on the back. These techniques are Stirring in at Temper and Layering on at Temper.
Recap
I had ingredients I was inspired to use in a bar
I brainstormed how I’d use the ingredients
I snackcrafted one of those
I decided to use a plant-based white chocolate, and used a batch of chocolate I had on hand
I set up to temper: chose and polished the moulds, had the inclusions prepped and ready, had seed on hand, had a cooling plan, melted my chocolate to over 100F and let it cool to 94F before adding the seed and the inclusions, set the trays aside to cool/set.
Vibe or gestalt
Garden, summer, fresh, plant-based, with a homegrown, home-canned/homemade with a hint of Laurel’s Kitchen (my first cookbook).
Happy late-ish summer (or late winter :), and if you make a granola inclusion, I hope you’ll share your thoughts!
Mackenzie
Sounds lovely! I love reading your train of thought. I was planning on making a pecan nut and blueberry granola chocolate bar this week, I just can’t make up my mind with which chocolate. I think I’m swaying towards a 60% pure ❤️ I was just thinking about putting the granola in the bar, not adjusting my usual granola recipe or anything. o yes I also have some freeze dried blueberry powder but worry now about the skin if I put it in the melanger! I might skip the powder (I have dried blueberries too)... but how to incorporate the powder, any tips?
Sounds delish! Someone gifted me a ton of licorice tarragon. I have a batch of tarragon and blackberry dark chocolate in the works that I’m planning to finish with candied fennel. It must be something about this time of year that’s triggering our blackberry/fennel-y/licorice cravings! Love it!