Sweet Plus Spicy Equals Magically Delicious

December 20, 2008 6:39 PM

I need recipes for sweets to use a bunch of candied chillies.

I'm about to wind up with a largish quantity of candied mild red chillies and perhaps the chili simple syrup they were candied in. I would like to include them in some sort of candy/pastry for gifts on Thursday. My first inclination is is towards a chocolate bark with something like dried cherries and a bit of cinnamon. I would love to hear other ideas though.
Measurements would help as well, I'll be in new territory with candy making, and I kind of suck at baking.

posted by piedmont to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

I've never had candied chilies - do they taste anything like jalapeño jelly? I'm not sure that this is what you are looking for, but corn muffins made with a teaspoon or so of jalapeño jelly in the middle are awesome.

Also, I made this recipe for Lemon Cornmeal Cookies today and they are much recommended. I think you could sub your candied chilies with plenty of the simple syrup in place of the corn syrup, with or without the lemon. (I made 3 substitutions when I made these and they still came out great.)

I'm having trouble imagining candied chilies with chocolate, so no advice there.
posted by found dog one eye at 8:49 PM on December 20, 2008

Depending on the heat of the chilis, you might consider chocolate chili truffles of some sort - generally a cream-based ganache covered in a harder chocolate coat. Fiddly, but utterly delicious. I don't usually measure so I recommend googling a recipe.
posted by ninazer0 at 10:31 PM on December 20, 2008

You really only need to dip them in chocolate. I wouldn't go for the bark because of the increased chocolate:chili ratio (the candying process already mitigates the spicinesds a lot).
posted by whatzit at 3:45 PM on December 21, 2008