Pastry Chef Attempts to Make Gourmet Almond Joys

There's 19 grams of added sugars in 145 gram packet.

That's 38 percent of your daily value.

I think the reason I keep getting sick

is because 60 percent of my diet is white sugar.

Between the cake shoot, and recipe testing,

and this nonsense.

[upbeat music]

[grunts]

Hi everyone.

I'm Claire.

We are in the BA test kitchen today,

and I am making gourmet ...

Almond Joy.

[drums]

Almond joy were one of my favorite candies

that you got trick-or-treating,

although I also liked Mounds,

but I love the combination of nuts,

coconut, and chocolate.

I'm kind of excited for this one.

I know, just from the start, Chris isn't even here.

I don't need him for this,

because I already know I'm gonna temper some chocolate.

Temper chocolate is chocolate that is heated,

cooled, and then heated again to specific temperatures

so that the chocolate has firm snap.

I mean, I've done it several times.

I feel more comfortable with that process.

[slow music]

I mean, I can't really split them

without one of them kind of breaking.

I can't do it anymore.

I quit.

In my mind, it's like, toast some almonds,

temper some chocolate, make sort of like,

a macaroon type filling, and like,

It doesn't seem that hard.

Who makes almond joy?

Peter Paul.

I have never ... Oh, no, Hershey company.

[crunching]

If you look at that interior of that almond,

it's definitely toasted, it's very important.

The problem is, with the Hershey chocolate,

and the coconut, it's so, so sweet that you don't ...

I don't taste a lot of the almond flavor.

I could definitely see a fancy chocolate filled

with an almond coconut filling, so I think it actually

can, very easily, be elevated to something on that level.

Mostly just by dialing down the sweetness,

improving the quality of the ingredients,

and trying to get better coconut flavor

out of the filling.

There's nothing that I am anticipating at this point,

like being particularly onerous or difficult.

There's the bar, the fun size, and then mini.

It's about six centimeters long,

two and a half centimeters wide,

and not including the almond,

a centimeter and a quarter thick.

For the purpose of comparison,

maybe it's best to go with the regular size.

Here we go.

Oh, interesting.

So, the almond appears to be covered in chocolate

before it's placed on top of the coconut.

There's a little ring.

The layer of chocolate around the filling itself

is very, very thin.

The filling itself is firm, but malleable.

It does leave, sort of, a sticky feeling

from the sugar or corn syrup, whatever it is.

I mostly just like how chewy it is from the coconut.

It's sorta macaroon like.

Which is a thing I know how to make,

and they're pretty easy.

Hi, Brad.

Claire!

Whatcha doing?

What are you doing? Are you gonna pull a weapon

out of that box again?

No this is stuff for It's Alive.

I'm making something top secret.

Well, it's not a top secret for me-

Can you tell me?

[smooth music]

Do you like coconut candies?

I love almond joys.

All right, here.

Have one. I don't want one right now.

I never liked how wet the coconut was.

Oh, really?

It's saturated in simple syrup.

I think, more likely, it's corn syrup.

Eh. I was basically thinking I was

going to make macaroons.

This one seems easy. It has a similar-

I know, right?

Are you here later?

All day.

Do you wanna do ... Are you busy?

Of course.

[laughs]

But not too busy to temper some chocolate, sous vide-

No, I have no interest in doing that.

I think we should do it side by side.

We?

No we- Yeah. No we.

Don't make anything, Claire.

You've made that very clear.

'cause a lot of people are sending me messages

about sous vide tempering.

Oh, that's a good idea. And I -

Sous vide probably works great.

Maybe you can just help me set up the baths.

Okay.

Wait, where do you have to go right now?

I got a little thing.

You got me sick earlier. You want a little bit

of garlic in your ear?

I have something going on.

[Claire] That's not good.

No.

I would give you advice, but I have no advice,

because I get sick all the time.

I love this candy.

It's ... I love it too.

I like that it's a toasted almond.

It's really properly toasted.

With good crunch, but I just think you can't taste it,

because -

It's overwhelmed by coconut. It's so sweet.

Yeah.

This reminded me of a girl scout cookie.

Hm.

Which is a very requested Gourmet Makes subject.

The coconut is more toasty.

In a samoa, because it's baked.

And it think that can be room for improvement.

A little bit of toasty coconut.

Maybe just toasting a portion, and mixing it in.

That could be fun.

That was the scariest candy, as a kid.

Look at it. It's like someone is trying to hide

a medicine in there or something for you.

Are you gonna go darker on the chocolate?

Yeah.

For sure. There's something about coconut and dark chocolate

that works very well. Yeah.

I wanted to know if I could use your little ...

Coconut crank Oh, yeah. It's ready to go.

What's it called?

The rotary of coconut?

Something with rotary in it.

Something ... crank. Yeah, grate.

It grates coconut.

Is what it is. It grates coconut.

And it does a great job.

Great job, especially for That was a terrible pun.

The kind of fine ...

We're at my favorite part, reading the ingredients.

Corn syrup.

Milk chocolate.

[words running together]

Coconut.

Sugar.

Almonds. Contains two percent of less of vegetable oil.

Palm kernel oil and or palm oil.

[words running together]

Cocoa

Whey, parenthesis milk.

Salt, hydrolyzed milk protein.

Lecithin, soy, sodium metabisulfite

to maintain freshness.

Corn syrup as the first ingredient is not a surprise.

I'm sure it's present in the filling and the chocolate.

It's a lot of stuff in it,

but ultimately, the main components are coconut,

chocolate, almonds, sugar, sweetener of some kind.

I'm still confused about Peter Paul

and why that's a little, tiny label

on all of the boxes and bars.

That's why we have the internet.

Let's go find out.

[Claire] Oh wait, Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company.

[Claire] It's a candy making division

within the Hershey company.

[Claire] Oh, it was founded in New Haven, Connecticut

in 1919 by six Armenian immigrants

led by Peter Paul Halajian.

Okay, well, that solves that mystery.

Then it says the almond joy bar

was introduced in 1948 using milk chocolate

instead of dark chocolate and adding a double toasted ...

Double toasted almond on top.

I've never really heard

of anything referred to as double toasted.

Well, I don't know why you would need to double toast it.

One toast, as long as it's thorough, should be enough.

It doesn't make any sense.

There are a lot of videos and recipes online

for homemade almond joy.

Oh, Epicurious has a recipe.

This has sweetened condensed milk,

so it is, sort of, a spin on macaroons,

Let's see what Ina Garten's

coconut macaroon recipe looks like.

Can't go wrong.

Sweetened shredded coconut,

sweetened condensed milk,

vanilla extract,

egg whites,

salt.

Okay, I think that's all I need to know.

The almond joy had three basic components.

The chocolate.

The almond,

and the filling.

The only one of them that requires any, I think,

real development and testing is the filling,

so that's where I'm going to start,

and my plan, step one, is crack some coconuts,

and start shaving.

[drums]

All right, time to crack some coconuts.

Ow!

Pinched my finger.

I'm fine.

Smells okay.

This is a bad one.

I can already tell,

This one's moldy.

Gonna toss it.

I'm glad the water didn't break apart,

so that it doesn't contaminate this.

Very tough not to crack.

All right, this one looks really good.

Brad might be going to Hawaii,

but that doesn't mean we can't have

a little taste of the tropics right here.

Mmm, delish.

So, here's Chris's rotary, grinder,

whatever we call this thing.

Okay, right.

See the bottom, how it creates a suction,

so that's how I anchor it to the counter.

All right, that's actually pretty firmly in place.

[shrieks]

[laughs]

Where's Chris?

I need Chris's help.

[shrieks]

God damn it.

All right, here's my coconut.

It's pretty wet.

I do think that I wanna dry this out a bit.

I'm gonna spread it on two baking sheets,

and put it in a pretty low oven.

I don't want it fully dry to the point where

it won't stick together and there's not moisture left,

and I lose some of that chewy texture.

I think I like the idea of adding some

proportion of toasted coconut.

This is finely shredded, unsweetened coconut.

I'm using this, because it order for the coconut to toast,

it has to basically completely dry anyway,

so there's not point in using the fresh stuff.

It will be different color, but I think it will blend better

because it's so fine.

[timer]

Okay.

I'm going to check both.

First, the toasted, because that can easily burn.

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

Nice, even toast.

So, you can see there's some moisture left in it.

If I press it together, it compacts.

I'm glad I didn't take it any further,

because I think it would be unpleasantly dry.

I'm gonna get this into a bowl, get that into a bowl,

get my scale out, and start mixing.

I'm gonna gather some of my other ingredients

that I'm thinking about using.

Coconut butter.

Organic coconut cream.

Sweetened condensed milk.

I gonna basically take small amounts of coconut

and do a bunch of different tests.

It eats a little dry.

I'm having seconds thoughts about the toasted coconut.

I wanna try a version without it.

Way too much vanilla extract.

Mmm.

I think it's good.

I do wish, still, that it had more chew

and more coconut flavor.

It's coconutty.

Yeah. Like syrup I just think it

eats a little dry.

It eats a little dry.

I might try adding pulsed, you know,

like the big, sweetened flakes of coconut, the shreds?

Sure.

They're so chewy. Yes.

I actually love that stuff. I do too.

'cause I just think that these pieces are too fine.

Right.

And because it eats a little dry,

I'm gonna try to rehydrate

the fresh coconut that I dehydrated

Right.

with coconut milk.

Right.

We'll just see what happens.

[drums]

I'm inventing this process as we speak,

so I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.

As Brad says, this is a test kitchen.

This is, I think, reading better, less dry.

There's still a fluffiness to it,

but it also has more weight.

Overall, I need to introduce more different textures

into the filling. So, we're gonna get our hands in some

sweet and shredded coconut for tomorrow.

Pick this back up using all the same ingredients,

and in the mean time, just to get ahead for tomorrow,

I'll toast some almonds.

Very, very well toasted, and then they'll be ready to go.

It's not even 6 o'clock and everyone peaced out,

but I'm not on their time line.

I think tomorrow will be ...

Ill get most of ... If not all the work done.

I don't know if you call that optimism or ...

Delusion.

[drums]

So today, we have that sweet and shredded coconut

that I'm gonna use

to try to get that same really chewy texture.

I love this stuff.

I remember eating it as a kid out of the bag,

'cause my mom had it for baking or something.

Hopefully today will be about getting the filling right

and then pretty much, assembly.

I'm gonna grab the scale,

the bowls and spoons,

and just start mixing.

[Claire] I'm going to have to throw this coconut

in a food processor because the flakes are pretty large,

but I do wanna leave them larger

than the fresh coconut from yesterday that we ground.

So, 10 grams of each.

This it?

Mmm.

Carla?

Yo.

You mind tasting something?

The only thing it doesn't have

is that shiny, squishy, sckoogie texture to it.

You know what I mean? Yeah.

That's more solid, and I feel like what is going on in here,

but I think those pieces of coconut

are a little bit bigger or something?

Yeah, I have more fresh coconut.

Should I use the fresh coconut

and grind it into bigger pieces

and add that?

I wanna basically create thin shreds.

First, I have to separate the flesh

from the hard, outer shell.

Damn it.

[laughs]

Having some difficulty.

I could try, rather than trying to break up the meat,

break up the shell around the meat.

Oh!

[laughs]

[Dan] Chris, Claire's given up on your coconut grinder.

I didn't give up.

It did its job.

The problem with the rotary grinder, whatever it's called

is - Too thin?

Too small?

Too small, especially once I dried it a bit.

Fair enough.

The rotary shredding blade on this guy

actually does a pretty good job.

That's what I'm gonna try and then I'm going to-

You could just hit that

with a three pound engineer's hammer or something.

You got one?

Maybe in the back.

All right.

Oh man.

Oh for [beep] sake.

I've got a rubber mallet.

Here, you want me to hold the mallet?

The mallet will work.

The mallet will work.

There is a three pound engineer's hammer in there,

but I have to grab somebody out in the hallway.

All right, no worries.

This will work.

[laughs]

I really wish I could do this

for the first time not on camera,

'cause I don't know what's gonna happen.

[banging]

Every thing's fine.

[banging]

Nothing's happening.

Chris.

Hi.

Yeah.

Oh, see you're doing it

in a much better way. You know.

All right, well, you're doing a great job.

Yes.

That's good. Yeah, cool.

You got it. You got it started, thank you.

You made me not look like a total idiot.

[banging]

How did he do that?

Okay.

That worked.

All the coconut meat is separated,

and I'm going to start peeling.

I'll rinse it at the end,

and then I'll grate it.

[drums]

I already have dried coconut,

so I wanna leave this pretty much as it is.

Once I figure out my mold apparatus,

I can move straight into the filling,

and I think it's gonna be very close to what I already did.

Just small tweaks, and then I'll just move into forming.

My thought is form the filling into long bars,

cut lengths, and then use the rounded edge

of some cutter to create the curve on the other side.

Brad, are you sure you're busy?

No, doctor canceled.

Yes!

Will you help me?

Yeah.

We have to make a mold.

A mold?

Can we grow it in my fermentation chamber?

I doubt it.

It's a mold joke.

Oh, I get it.

It's not funny. I didn't get it.

But that was funny.

No one laughed, Claire.

I see you got a nice pair of snips there.

I'm trying to remove the inner part of the moon.

You just want the half circle?

Yeah.

Brute-force here.

Yeah.

That's where you come in.

I don't know why I'm shutting my ...

I don't know why I think it's gonna fly off

and hit me in the face but ...

Well, better safe than sorry, though.

Yeah.

Yay.

Thank you.

I'm just gonna match the curve.

[Brad] Yeah.

And we'll see.

Lil' tin knockers union.

The what?

Tin knockers.

What is a tin knocker?

Like HVHC or whatever it called.

Like guys who do duct work.

The Tin Knockers!

I'm not familiar.

The Tin Knockers Union, they know.

Can you set up the water baths

for tempering the chocolate?

Oh.

I don't ...

Let me see if they have two of the sous vide things.

Okay. I would love your help with that.

Now I'm gonna make the filling mixture.

I'm gonna do one part yesterday's coconut,

one part today's coconut,

and two parts sweetened coconut.

[drums]

I think it looks really, really good.

Mmm.

Chris.

Hi.

Wanna give it quick ...

Sorry.

It's not too sweet.

Mmm.

Good right?

Oh, it's so good.

Not too sweet?

Not too sweet.

Is there any toast on this?

No.

No toast.

I'm gonna pull some out and add a little toasted

just to have an option.

It really tastes like biting into a fresh coconut.

Ugh, yes!

Chris said it was good.

Which means I feel pretty golden.

Chris is never wrong.

I do wanna try, maybe, adding some toasted coconut,

and we're gonna do the toasted

and the plain side by side.

All right, Claire.

What temperature.

Oh, Brad.

Okay. One ...

Where's Rhoda?

We're trying to temper chocolate using sous vide

and the reason is works well, theoretically,

is because very constant temperatures.

We're having a problem.

Brad's having some technical issues.

It says you're paired, no?

Connect.

Hold on, we're gonna try again.

Unplug.

[drums]

What's happening?

A whole lot of nothing.

You gotta download the app.

Do I have to make a profile and all that?

All right.

So, that's preheating.

What?

Brad?

The light changed color.

I think it's working.

No, but it's pulsing.

Listen, I'm very familiar with these units.

I might have [beep] you on this one.

Why?

[laughs]

Well, it was working for a while,

but then it started pulsing ...

[mysterious music drowns out Brad]

I took the three good ones to use,

and I think I left this one here.

You feel the pulse?

Classic, Brad.

Oh my god.

So, we don't have any other -

[Brad] Sous vide machines?

Emergent circulator?

No.

So, we do this the old fashioned way

is what you're saying?

Yeah, I'd do this the old fashioned way.

Damn. I was really hoping I could just

have you do the whole part.

[loud background noise]

Just a lot of things happening in this kitchen right now.

Grill's on fire.

Brad is stinking up the whole kitchen with sauerkraut.

Anyway, Rhoda is on the case

of the broken emergent circulator.

We might be able to get our hands on another one today,

but regardless, I have to form the filling.

So, I'm going to work on that,

and I have my toasted filling,

and my un-toasted filling.

[drums]

[gasps]

[Brad] Oh my god.

[laughs]

Hold on.

Fortunately, the filling is holding its shape pretty well,

so I don't think I totally ruined it.

Everything's fine.

I'm gonna use an almond to create little depressions

so that when I cover them in chocolate,

and place them on the filling,

they have a little area to rest.

Okay, so I'm going to cover these,

and set aside, and repeat the same thing

with our filling that has the toasted coconut in it.

[drums]

The good thing about this taking a very long time

is that Rhoda already came back

with a new sous vide machine,

so here it is.

Here's what I think I'm gonna do.

I need to temper chocolate in two batches.

One to coat the almonds,

and then I need a second batch that I'll use for enrobing.

We're just looking for a vacuum sealer.

I can't find it.

We don't know where it is.

Gabby's not here Gabby!

Brad left.

Brad hides stuff.

Vacuum sealer?

Wait, it says connecting.

[Brad] Hey Claire.

Brad, do you know where the vacuum sealer is?

[Brad] Yeah, its over by ... on that rack.

You can't see me?

No.

It says poor connection.

[Brad] Oh.

Are you on the ferry?

[Brad] You don't need to worry about that.

[laughs]

Where?

Here? Oh, Claire.

Turn around.

Turn around.

Where?

Where?

[Brad] Right.

Oh, no.

Keep going right.

Oh, I see it!

[laughs]

I see it!

[Coworker] Is he feeding birds?

[Brad] You cut them to size.

Seriously, where are you?

[Brad] I went to the store.

Gotta get some medicine.

It sounds like you're in nature.

[Brad] Well, there's a bird by the -

[laughs]

[Brad] All right, Godspeed.

Okay, thanks.

Brad.

I don't believe that for a second.

[Coworker] He's in a pharmacy with a bird on his shoulder.

[laughs]

[Claire] Yeah, really.

I'm tempering chocolate sous vide.

I'm gonna cut this to make a bag.

Melt the chocolate at 115 Fahrenheit.

Agitating, agitating.

Bringing it down to about 81 Fahrenheit,

and then raising the temperature back

to around 90 Fahrenheit.

Moving on to coating the almonds.

My plan is, dry off the bag,

put the chocolate in here,

add the almonds,

and then fish them out one by one with a fork,

and place them on top of the little fillings.

[Chris] Are you gonna do a temper test?

Yeah.

I guess I should test to check the temper.

So, for the test strip, I just make a stripe

of chocolate on a piece of parchment.

The idea is that it dries in less that 30 seconds,

and that it gets that shiny finish.

It doesn't really seem to be drying.

This is annoying.

I'm just going to keep going.

Just 'cause it's getting late and everyone wants to go home.

[sighs]

The test strip did not set,

so I don't think it's tempered.

You can see it's not hardened at all.

[Dan] I know you don't wanna talk about it.

I don't wanna talk about it.

[Dan] But I think we should talk about it.

I don't think we should talk about it.

[Dan] Claire.

What do you wanna talk about, Dan?

I have no idea what went wrong.

I did everything it said.

[sighs]

It's not tempered, because it's still liquid.

Duh.

Maybe it's too thick of a test strip, I don't know.

I think I have to keep waiting.

[drums]

Okay, there an important update.

The test strip is still not set,

but these early almonds

that I placed look like they have set.

Which is a good sign,

so I still have hope that the chocolate is tempered,

and that my test strip was just too thick.

[Dan] You need a thinner test strip?

Yeah, I can do kengie's test.

We're gonna put this knife in the fridge,

and test it in three minutes,

and see if it comes out snappy and firm.

[drums]

[Rhoda] It's tempered.

Yeah.

It's tempered.

[Rhoda] It's definitely tempered.

Which I already knew,

because these set so fast.

Yeah.

It definitely did.

I think it worked too well.

Now, I can't place the remaining almonds on top here,

because this is what happened.

So, I'm going to try to just very gently rewarm.

Enough to place those final almonds.

Well, these look terrible.

[sighs]

Okay.

For the next stage of enrobing,

I'm going to transfer these to the rack at an angle

so that I can pipe straight

from the bag to cover in chocolate,

give it a tap,

and let the excess fall down below.

[drums]

All right, we're gonna wrap this up.

So, overall, I think they look really good.

They look beautiful, and very uniform,

which is nice.

These aren't quite finished.

I have to add the chocolate on the bottom,

so I'm going to let these sit,

and wrap up the other ones that I haven't yet covered,

but now we have these good references

when we come in tomorrow morning,

and we're gonna repeat this process.

Hopefully it will be a lot of seamless,

and then we'll be done.

[drums]

All right, it's day three.

Last night, I think we ended in a good place.

I am very curious to see what has become

of the ones we covered yesterday.

Oh no!

Rhoda!

What?

You didn't do anything.

It was me.

Look at them.

They look terr ...

The chocolate bloomed so streaky.

[Rhoda] Why?

[Claire] Something bad happened to the chocolate.

I think it's because I covered them?

[Rhoda] Could have been a little moisture?

Well why do these look so good?

Those are the original.

You should just re-temper chocolate,

and the do another coat.

What do you think happened here?

So much bloom.

All I did was, before they set fully,

I just did that and put a little plastic over it.

I think you should do a little research.

Yeah.

Damn it.

This sucks.

Sorry, Claire.

I knew this was gonna happen.

Bloom is this chalky looking coating

on top of the chocolate.

Sugar bloom feels dry and does not melt to the touch

while fat bloom feels slick and melts.

So, let's see.

I think that we have both.

[laughs]

God.

This sucks.

I might change the method where ...

Just dab chocolate in the wells

and place a fresh almond on top,

rather than coating the whole almond,

and then cover the whole thing.

My plan today was to come in

and slap some chocolate on the bottoms,

finish enrobing, scrap that plan.

The plan is basically start over.

All right, so will you do the filling?

I'm gonna do some research

and then I'm gonna start forming.

Yep.

[typing]

Lipids that are responsible for fat bloom

move through pores and cracks in the chocolate.

What's happening is the fats in the filling are migrating,

chocolate is porous,

so it's being pulled and migrating to the surface.

Chocolate is very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature,

so I think it's too hot in here, let's hope.

Some fat bloom might be inevitable,

but we can prevent it from happening

or decrease the chances of it happening

by storing it at a cool temperature

and making sure it's well tempered.

I have some sense of what we're dealing with now.

When we try again, I feel more confident.

[drums]

All right.

Let's hope.

[drums]

I have my second bag of chocolate

that's just been holding at temper hopefully,

and it's time to coat the bottoms.

I'm just gonna retrieve the tray.

They are pretty streaky.

It looks like a marbling effect,

so there's two different surface textures.

They're not ruined.

I'm not gonna redo them, because I don't have time anyway.

We're wrapping this up, so I would say it's acceptable.

It's not ...

Something is happening with the chocolate temper

or it's fat migrating from the coconut.

It could be any number of those things

and or combination, I don't know what.

Anyway, let's move this along.

[Dan] Do you think anyone's gonna notice that they're -

I'm certainly not going to say anything.

Chris is gonna notice.

Chris, not a good time.

[beep] chocolate, man.

Seriously.

[drums]

I don't think the streakiness has gotten worse,

so that's good.

They look good, especially if you, sort of,

quickly stand over them

with your eyes and cross them a little bit.

[Claire] Just don't look too close.

Overall, considering uniformity,

regularity of shape,

overall dimensions,

I think they look great.

At some point, I wasn't even competing with Almond Joy.

I was competing with myself,

so that's what I'm up against.

It's not that hard.

All right.

Pretty decent snap.

[crunches]

I think the balance of flavors

and of the amount of ingredients is pretty perfect.

This, for me, is ideal.

I was able to achieve a thin layer

of chocolate between the almond and the coconut.

I love the way they taste.

I wanna keep eating it.

It's really good.

I do think the chocolate is tempered.

I just wanna know what I'm seeing.

Is is right that I'm seeing some striations in the enrobing?

Yes. Okay.

You are.

It's just an observation.

It's not an optical allusion.

It could be that the chocolate didn't temper properly,

which is just like, kill me now.

It could have been on purpose.

This could be a disco Mound.

Yeah, there you go.

Right?

You know what I like?

That there's chocolate

surrounding the almonds Under the almond.

Yep.

I actually made depressions in the filling,

and then put a dab of chocolate in it,

and just out the almost on top.

I noticed the depressions.

It's delicious.

It's a good candy.

It's great.

Admire the profiles.

Wow.

This is homemade, this is theirs.

Oh.

Yours looks much cleaner.

Mm.

A lot more coconut flavor.

Mmhmm.

More coconut flavor.

Islandy?

Very islandy.

More almond flavor, honestly that ...

Maybe it's just a higher quality almond.

I think it's a fresher almond that we roasted yesterday.

But still getting that nice, chewy coconut.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well done.

Thank you.

I've been saving this half for you.

Cool.

The coconut flavor, it feels real.

You really taste the chocolate and the coconut.

The two things and then that almond.

It truly is a joy.

At this point, this last three days have not even ...

It stopped being about Almond Joy

and it started being about chocolate tempering.

The mystery remains.

I'm excited to temper chocolate again,

because now I am kind of mad at it,

and the anger is motivating me.

Aside from that issue, I actually had a lot

of fun doing this.

I think it was very successful in a lot of ways.

Truly something that I enjoy eating, and like eating,

and think its delicious, and I'm excited for the next one,

which is gonna be savory.

Here's how you make gourmet Almond Joy.

Gourmet spells G-O-R-M-A-Y.

Toast raw almonds in a 350 degree oven

until they smell deeply roasted at 12 to 16 minutes.

Set aside to cool.

In a food processor, pulse sweetened shredded coconut

into fine pieces.

Open a fresh coconut, and finely grind the flesh

using a hand crank rotary grinder.

Dehydrate coconut in a low oven

then moisten slightly with unsweetened coconut milk.

Take the second half of the coconut,

and pry the meat away from the tough shell,

shred the fresh coconut in a food processor

using the smaller grating disk,

then pulse to break up

to the size of the shredded, sweetened coconut.

Dry lightly in a low oven.

Combine 1000 grams sweetened, shredded coconut.

25 grams finely shredded dehydrated, re-hydrated coconut.

25 grams freshly grated coconut.

80 grams sweetened condensed milk.

30 grams unsweetened coconut cream.

50 grams warm coconut butter.

A half teaspoon of vanilla paste.

And a pinch of salt.

Mix well to combine, then weigh out into 12 gram portions.

Form each portion into a compact, rounded rectangle

about five and three quarter centimeters long.

Use an almand to make small depressions

on each coconut patty.

To temper chocolate, seal 10 ounces of dark chocolate

into each of two vacuum sealed bags

and melt completely in a 114 degree fahrenheit water bath

heated with an emergent circulator.

Add ice to water bath to drop the temperature,

and set emergent circulator to 81 Fahrenheit.

Agitate bags of chocolate as they cool,

then raise the temperature to 90 degrees Fahrenheit,

agitating constantly.

Dry off one bag and snip a small opening.

Pipe a small dab of chocolate in each depression

on the coconut patties

and press the toasted almond on top of each dab.

Generously pipe chocolate over each Almond Joy,

tap baking sheet on the counter to settle

and force off excess chocolate.

Transfer Almond Joy to a parchment lined baking sheet.

Chill until chocolate is set.

Spread a thin layer of chocolate across the bottoms

of each Almond Joy,

and place back on the parchment chilling again until set.

Do you have a good dentist?

I really like my dentist.

I need a new dentist.

I now see his partner, because my dentist actually

got into a bad accident-

at burning man. Oh no.

At burning man?

At burning man.

A tremendous guy.

Great office.

You know, it's like bright, and clean, and airy.

Wow.

A dentist who goes to burning man.

He's probably hanging out with Andy.

Yeah, really.