Pastry Chef Attempts to Make Gourmet Twix

When Summits...

The reason it came out, Summits were like the competitor.

They were like wafers... Summits?

... with little peanuts on top.

Are you like a snack food historian?

Yeah,

but Summits were great and Twix just crushed 'em.

But it's like what's cook...

They're cookies they're not...

They're not... Adam...

candy bars, look...

they're cookie bars. I think...

I need to be the person to tell you that

every single person here disagrees with you.

I know you're the boss. Not candy bars.

What is a can, what?

It's a cookie bar.

Eamil I just, I need you... It's a cookie bar.

Just please I.

Anyway not a fan.

[upbeat jazz music]

Oh.

Dammit.

Hey everyone I'm Claire.

We're in the BA Test Kitchen and today I'm making gourmet

Twix.

[punchy jazz drums]

I like Twix.

I think in the over under like good candies, bad candies.

It's definitely a good candy.

And it's been a while since I had Twix.

But I know it's caramel,

there's like a cookie, and chocolate.

Yeah, crunchy cookie, delicious caramel, creamy chocolate.

Cookie bars.

All of the good things.

The thing that I think about most when I think of Twix

are like the older commercials where they show

the like cascading waves of melted chocolate

covering like,

like oozing down and over the caramel on top of the cookie.

I'm very excited, so I get to have my after lunch dessert,

which is different than my after dinner dessert.

I like to have dessert twice a day.

There's no after breakfast dessert.

That's inappropriate.

[wrapper crunches]

Looks great.

Have the little waves down the top.

Whatever that pattern is

it's like the heart beat on the monitor pattern

on the base.

Oh yeah, very stretchy caramel.

Notice the cookie.

I'm gonna taste it now.

Delicious.

Twix is one of the few candies or snack things

that taste exactly the way I remember.

Very chewy caramel, very sweet chocolate as I was expecting,

and very crisp, almost dry cookie.

Here's all the kinds.

I'm gonna start with the egg.

There's something weird about it.

I think the cookie is different, it's not as good.

White chocolate.

Not my favorite.

I'm happy to see there's a dark chocolate version.

This chocolate looks very very dark.

It's an unpleasantly bitter dark chocolate.

Kinda disappointed.

Okay, triple chocolate.

So this chocolate caramel and chocolate cookie.

There's something wrong [laughs] with that one.

You guys need to taste this.

Something went wrong.

Someone's gonna lose their job over this.

See look Dan has just spit it out.

Oh he just spi [laughs].

Whoa, more highs and lows than I've ever experienced

in the tasting of all the different candy varieties.

Given that Chris is a super taster that might kill him.

[film crew laughs]

He might die.

Do you wanna taste something disgusting?

Yeah.

Really?

[film crew laughs]

[Claire] Wait for it.

I was ready for like fireworks of awfulness.

Was it just the one we tried?

I still have the bad aftertaste in my mouth

from eating this.

Yeah.

Are you getting it from this one?

Yes.

That was a useful exercise if only to confirm that like

there is no Twix except for original Twix in my mind.

I only have eyes for this guy.

Confidence level is pretty high because

if only because I can combine a lot of the experience

from previous episodes.

So like I think a lot of what I learned

in Snickers will apply here

and also some of the things I learned on Almond Joy

will help a lot.

Chewy caramel's essential.

A crisp sort of dry cookie,

something in the shortbread realm.

It's says creamy chocolate, it doesn't say milk chocolate.

I could do what I've done in the past

which is do a mixture of milk and dark

to kind of get the right balance of sweet and bitter.

What?

I'm gonna temper the chocolate.

Yes I'm gonna temper the chocolate.

At this point we will just assume

I'll be tempering chocolate.

If I can get the cookie in one day

it might be a two, two and a half day challenge.

So end-to-end it is 9.7 centimeters.

And it's about 2.3 centimeters wide.

The height is 1.5 centimeters.

So I wanna try to isolate the cookie

from the chocolate and the caramel

just to really see what the shape is.

This is very interesting what I just found.

One, there's this like line of divots

down the top of that bar.

And then the caramel has like the opposite relief

of the divots.

You know, it might be to create an air pocket

to make it easier to release from the mold.

It also has smooth sides all around

which tells me that it's not a cookie

that's made in a slab and then sliced.

It's preformed into this shape and then baked.

It almost seems like there's another flour in here

besides wheat flour, like a rice flour

or something that's

it's like a tiny bit of grit.

It's not very sweet.

It basically has no flavor on it's own.

Can definitely make this part taste better.

It's a pretty tight caramel.

Almost intolerably sweet on its own.

I think that there's probably a pretty high

proportion of corn syrup in there.

It does make me realize just to what extent

Twix is greater than the sum of its parts

because not really any one of these things

is something that I'd like to eat on it's own.

Christina Chaey earlier today told me

that Twix is her second favorite candy,

second only to Ferrero Rocher.

Come on in Christina.

It's because they have the best commercials.

[Claire laughs]

Is this gonna be about cascading waves of chocolate?

Yes! Yes.

They go shoo, shoo. Yes.

And then it goes like... In slow motion.

Yes. And it cascades...

From someplace out of frame.

From some reckless chocolate fountain.

Unbelievably bad. Is this for

left-handed people?

[laughs] No.

Well why does it say left?

It's part of their marketing

if there's left Twix and right Twix.

No, it's for the left hand and the right hand.

I don't think that's right. Yes.

I'm a lefty you're a righty let's try it.

I don't, this is not left handed.

Yes it is.

No it's not.

To the left, to the left.

To the right, is it a dance?

You're going the wrong way [laughs].

Just eat the Twix.

I love Twix.

I was gonna ask you what are your thoughts?

I think you have to nail the

consistency of the caramel Yes.

'cause you want it, the bite and the pull.

Has to be that... And you wanna see your

teeth marks. That like firmness

and chewiness but like not too runny

but also not too hard.

Right.

It's not like sticking to your teeth.

Right.

And then the consistency of whatever that

unknown shortbread cookie

thing is. Yes.

Nondescript cookie. But then you're gonna

make that taste delicious. I know.

At this point they make me say this

but now for my favorite part reading the ingredients.

Okay.

Let me process that.

A whole lot of ingredients in that.

So baking soda,

I'm sure that that's an ingredient in the cookie.

That's giving it kind of like lift and aeration.

In the cookie: wheat flour, sugar, palm oil.

Not surprised.

So no butter.

The ingredient list told me a lot.

So research will just sort of be like

maybe more focused on I guess construction and assembly.

The name Twix is a portmanteau

derived from twin biscuit sticks.

Fascinating.

I didn't know, that's a really good fun fact.

[Narrator] This chocolate and caramel candy bar

is famous for it's sweet cookie snap.

And in case you were wondering

what all those little holes in the cookie dough do...

[Claire] I was wondering.

One is that it actually helps it release from the molder.

[Claire] Hah.

And then when we cut our first...

Didn't I say that?

[phone rings]

Ann is calling you Gaby.

Oh Gaby, you don't have to.

Pardon.

[laughs] Gaby.

You can be in the video.

Okay.

I didn't learn a whole lot during the research phase

but that's okay because I think I kinda

got everything I needed to know

through just tasting and measuring and all that.

I'm feeling pretty good actually about this one.

[upbeat jazz music]

Today I wanna start on the cookie

which is kind of like the central component.

I want to start with a basic shortbread

and see where I get with that.

I might have to add a bit of leavening

which is not typical in shortbread.

Shortbread is just butter, flour, sugar

and as I remember from reading the Twix ingredients

there is no butter at all in the recipe.

So that's a really good place to start

because we're already gonna improve the flavor quite a bit.

[upbeat jazz music]

I'll do two separate recipes:

one with baking powder; one without.

And I did come across a shortbread recipe

that's based on a Michael Ruhlman recipe

that uses a little bit of rice flour

along with all purpose flour which is interesting

'cause that helps you get

a very kind of sandy, crispy texture.

So that's an interesting idea.

Add my vanilla and then dry ingredients to make the dough.

All right, so this is pretty well mixed.

Did I measure this recipe right?

It just seems very crumbly.

Just makes me wonder if I goofed up the flour.

But how could I have screwed up such a simple recipe?

I'm sure there's a way.

I'm gonna put this into the fridge

and then I'm gonna do the exact same thing

but add baking powder.

[upbeat jazz music]

And that's because I want to do a side-by-side

to see if adding a leavening

gives me a better texture in the cookie.

So BP for baking powder.

That goes into the fridge.

So this was that first shortbread.

No baking powder.

So I'll roll it out to the right thickness

and then cut it in to bars.

This can't be the dough.

Did I write the recipe down wrong?

I'm getting off to a bad start.

I seriously am looking up if I wrote this down wrong

'cause I don't know how this can be right.

[upbeat jazz music]

I did do it wrong.

I did do it wrong.

Oh man.

It sucks.

I would prefer not to tell you what I did wrong.

But I left out the extra six tablespoons of butter.

It did seem so dry.

God, something is happening.

It is, is mercury in retrograde?

[Dan] That's a thing right. No, not anymore.

Yeah it is.

No?

I think it still is.

In? Is it?

From what I can tell it's 100% of the time in retrograde.

Is mercury in retrograde dot com.

No!

[Claire] [laughs] no? It's not.

[Kitchen Assistant] It ended on March 28th.

Oh that's not helping. Everything else has been

bumming you out.

So this test is...

It's not pointless.

Although it's totally not the test I thought it was.

I'ma bake it and just see what happens.

[upbeat jazz music]

One good thing is that they gained

kind of a smooth exterior even on the cut sides.

They didn't change in terms of dimensions at all

which is good, that's what we want.

It's pretty sweet.

I wonder if maybe that's a little too much sugar.

I do have to think about balance.

If I use dark chocolate

and so I get that bitterness and that intensity

and I make a really dark caramel

it actually might provide good balance

to have some sugar in the cookie.

Surprisingly it's not that bad

considering I left out a quarter of the butter.

I think that maybe cross section-wise they're a little big.

Yeah, I gotta make them like half as tall.

Here's my plan.

I'm gonna add butter back in

to the existing dough that I made with baking powder,

so three tablespoons.

Then I'm gonna remake this original dough again

also adding back three tablespoons.

So I can do a side-by-side

of two identical doughs with a little more butter

one with baking powder.

[upbeat jazz music]

The baking powder did a little bit of spreading.

But then so did the version without baking powder.

But I think that actually had more to do

with dough temperature.

This dough was more room temp when it went in.

You know, they're definitely more golden

than the cookie inside the Twix.

I'm deciding not to care about that

because I think that's really important for flavor.

Okay, so that's without, this is with.

Not only is there not a huge difference

I don't think that the things

that the baking powder are bringing

are necessarily adding a lot or helping.

Texture-wise it's pretty good.

Like this could be a tiny bit drier.

So I'm trying to isolate it so you can try.

I wanna... You should do this...

know your thoughts. blind.

Oh, yeah, here I'll.

Okay, now you just can't look when you eat it.

Okay.

That's obviously yours [laughs].

Yeah, it was.

Okay, nevermind, don't do that to anyone else.

It's just like not even there.

The essence of butter is so intense and pure

in the shortbread.

Okay, good, I feel,

I feel good about it.

I think it like works. I feel...

I feel great.

I mean I just ate more.

Yeah cool, right, right.

That was like weirdly not that hard.

I'm feeling like today

is maybe not gonna be the day that I finish.

In which case.

This is the second day.

I do wanna just do one quick experiment.

This is what I wanna try is

basically shaving down the sides

using a fine grater like this

just to see if I can make it straight.

It's working pretty well.

I'm kinda surprised.

Straight.

Little wavy.

That looks really good.

So now at least I have kind of a backup plan

if they're not baking with really straight sides.

I don't have to keep doing this part.

It's just kind of fun and satisfying.

I'll talk to you about the caramel while I'm doing this.

I did a recipe a while back

that appeared in the magazine for a salted,

a chocolate,

what is it a...?

A salted caramel chocolate tart.

The caramel had to be soft enough that you could cut it

but that it also was firm enough

that it wouldn't just like ooze out of the tart right away.

It's just sugar, corn syrup,

add a little water to it

and then butter, cream.

All right, so this is that caramel.

It's still warm but you can see it's now firm enough

where I can kind of roll it around and work with it

so that's good.

I'm gonna taste it.

It's like 1,000 times better than

the caramel in the Twix.

My best bet is to actually pour the caramel out into a mold

and then let it set.

And I can cut it into bar shapes to match the cookie.

The length of the cookie

is almost exactly the width of the pan

so that means I can just cut across.

I have these three pans of caramel.

They're already setting up

but I wanna get them into the fridge

so they set really quickly.

And then I think I'm gonna move into the final thing

I'll probably be able to get done today

which is trying to marry the caramel and the cookies.

Do you say caramel?

What?

Do you say car... what do you say?

People say all different things.

Well Claire I don't know if you've noticed

but I don't say anything correctly.

Oh Brad, that's not true.

Uh, let me think, okay.

Oh Claire, what've you got there?

Caramel, caramel.

Car-a-mel. Car-mel.

Car-mel. Car-mel I said.

Car-mel. Car-a-mel,

I guess it depends.

Is there a right way?

I don't think there's one right way.

I like your attitude Claire.

[laughs] Right, there's many

there's many ways to say it.

Ooh, looking good. There's that layer.

All right so that, that...

Let me grab the cookies.

Can I smell it?

[Claire] Yeah, sorry we didn't save you any.

Grab a bite. Yeah.

It's not dry enough.

I'm actually gonna make them again tomorrow

and really dehydrate them.

I love shortbread.

I'm afraid it's a little too shortbready.

And oh my god Claire you have to have the holes.

No Brad, I'm not doing the holes.

Why do I have to have...

Literally nobody knows that that's there.

Uh, more like everyone knows who eats Twix.

[laughs] That's not a thing.

No one has said that.

Really?

Truth be told

I did forget about the little divots in the cookie

before today.

Apparently not.

Great work.

Thanks.

Actually Brad you wanna grab me that torch.

This stuff is hard to cut 'cause it's so sticky.

Don't get it too close to your face.

So to cut through the caramel

which is really sticky and a little bit firm

I'm gonna heat up my knife.

[laughs] Now I can't turn it on.

[laughs] Thank you. Right-tighty,

lefty-loosey.

I know, I never understood that to be honest.

What do you mean?

It's like the best thing ever.

[laughs] I don't... Righty-tighty,

I don't want this on that camera.

You spin it right.

No, I don't... Righty-tighty.

I don't even wanna explain

why it doesn't make sense to me [laughs].

Please, please don't. Because.

Claire I need to know.

But it's in a circle.

There is no right and left.

It's just clockwise [laughs] and counter-clockwise.

No Claire. So which way is right?

[laughs] Right Claire.

This way.

But right, It's 'cause you're left...

But what if the arrow was on the bottom

and then turning it right is the other direction?

So like if you're on your car and it's like this

you have to

imagine and you go like that. Right, exactly.

It doesn't make sense to me if it's left and right

when it's a circle. Claire it works perfectly.

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. All right.

Well thanks for finally explaining that.

I never understood it [laughs].

Lefty-loosey.

My knife is stuck.

It's not good.

All right, the caramel's very firm

which I wanted.

I'm worried that maybe it's a bit too firm

like stick in your teeth.

I want it to fall a little bit over the top of the cookie

so I'm gonna try to gently heat it.

Hope I don't regret this part.

And hopefully in kind of oozing

it also sticks and adheres a little bit to the cookie.

Wait a minute.

I got it.

I forgot again.

I'm like really happy with that.

I think it's pretty good,

don't you think?

Caramel's a little tiny bit thick

but I'm not that worried if there's

you know, an extra millimeter of caramel

in terms of thickness.

Ooh, wow.

Wow.

So far you're at eight inches.

Okay, I'm gonna keep going.

Oh my god.

Oh my god. Nine.

Ten.

[laughs] Oh my [laughs].

How much longer?

It's going weirdly well.

It's going weirdly well?

Yeah.

Like I'm-afraid well.

Yeah, well you haven't done the chocolate yet.

True. You know how that goes.

So I'm gonna put the caramel back in the pan

'cause I'm happy with this.

This was a good useful test.

Then I'm going to go back to the cookies

and use the grater to keep filing away those edges,

make them into nice bars.

So this might be a time,

like most episodes of Gourmet Makes

where we get out the dehydrator

and we get the cookies baked to the point

where we want to bake them

and then let them totally dry out.

I've never dehydrated a cookie.

I don't quite know what it would do to the texture.

I imagine

it's just what I think it would do.

Just give that super crisp snap.

All right now I can just sit here

and peacefully [laughs]...

It's weirdly soothing to shave off

the sides of the cookie.

[Bossa nova music]

Very pleasing to me

having all these nice, straight-edged, uniform cookies.

I wanna get them in the dehydrator

so I'm gonna go grab that and set it up.

So it makes me look like the Incredible Hulk

because it looks big.

I think today went really well.

I got actually a little further along

than I thought I would.

And I think the caramel and cookies are in a good place.

Hopefully in the morning I can focus on that assembly part

and

I think that it would be ambitious

but a goal could be enrobing them in the afternoon

letting them set

and then finishing up tomorrow

and a day.

I don't know how it's gonna go.

Dan looks so skeptical [laughs].

It's going great.

What could go wrong?

[upbeat jazz music]

I don't think there's a curse of the third day.

That's something other people talk about.

But that's the idea that I come in on day three

feeling like all I have to do is wrap it up

maybe a couple of finishing flourishes

and then disaster strikes and I have to start over.

First things first

I wanna look at the shortbreads

that have been dehydrating on very low temp all night.

Uh, I like love how shaving off the sides looks.

They just look so smooth and regular.

There we go.

Left Twix and right Twix.

All right, I think that's looking

like I'm in a good place with the size of the cookie.

I think it's the right amount of dry.

It crumbles nicely,

like it turns into really pleasant buttery little crumbs

which I think is important when everything's put together.

I think the place to start today

is to just grab my second dough

and roll out some more bars

and start baking them.

And then I have a lot cookies to work with

for when I'm assembling.

That's usually not what I do with a micro blade [laughs].

I love this part.

My favorite part of the show. Were you like trimming

the biscuit stuff? Yeah.

It looks like you're really having fun.

I'm having a really good time.

[Bossa nova music]

[Steel doors clanging]

So I'm gonna check on these yeah.

Okay, what I'm thinking about doing is

slicing crosswise to get strips of caramel

the right width and length for the cookies.

I think what I'll do is

make just like a little paper covering,

like a little sleeve for each bar of caramel

and I wanna fit it back into the pan

just like this.

So having that little lip of paper

in between each strip of caramel

will prevent them from fusing back together

while they're in the pan.

And I just have to make 19 more of these

to fill the two loaf pans.

[upbeat jazz music]

So there's actually 11 in each for the two pans.

So let's look at the cookies.

All right, I'm kind of excited.

It's time to fuse our caramel and cookies.

There was that weird layer of chocolate

in between the cookie and the caramel

which I'm kind of skipping

because I think I can get the caramel

to stick to the cookie all on its own.

So, my plan is this.

Take the torch, soften the top layer of caramel.

Oh.

Dammit!

[laughs] Well I caught the parchment paper on fire

and the caramel is not even a little bit warm.

All right, torch was a bad idea.

Oo, it's still on.

There we go.

I'm gonna try to pivot to using a heat gun.

It's good, it's working,

it's definitely softening the surface.

Then apply the cookie upside down

on to the caramel and press gently

just to get them to adhere.

All right that seems really good.

I feel like the cookie is really on there.

[Claire] Yes, I've never had a better time

doing Gourmet Makes.

It's so clean and everything's fitting.

Just nothing on Gourmet Makes ever works out as well.

So it looks pretty great.

I'm gonna put this into a fridge

so that the caramel hardens and firms up really well.

I'm gonna move on to chocolate phase.

Yeah we're gonna temper the chocolate.

And so we're setting up our immersion circulator

because I am gonna try to do it sous vide.

So chocolate tempering

for like the one hundred thousandth time on this show

is where you melt chocolate

and bring it down and then back up to certain temperatures

so that you get a chocolate, once it cools,

that has kind of a snap and a shine.

Tempered chocolate is good because when you pick it up

it won't immediately start to melt into your fingers

and it's just sort of like sturdier

and makes a better coating.

I feel totally indifferent

about chocolate tempering at this point.

I don't really care.

I know I have to do it.

I might as well get it over with.

This is the fourth time I've tried to temper chocolate

on this show.

Fourth or fifth, I don't remember, third.

We did it with Snickers.

We did it with Almond Joy, which was a disaster.

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

Duh.

I've no idea what went wrong.

I did everything it said.

It's kind of getting harder not easier.

One thing that was a good learning thing from last time

was using the vacuum sealer and this, the plastic tubing

to create sort of like makeshift pastry bags.

So what I wanna do is make two different bags of chocolate.

One is gonna be a bigger bag

and that's what I'll use to coat the Twix across the tops.

And one will be a slightly smaller bag

just for putting chocolate along the bottoms.

All right that looks great.

So then here's a triangle, so once it's all melted

I'll be able to use it like a pastry bag this way.

I'm gonna get this into the water to start melting

and then this is that larger bag of chocolate...

[inhales sharply] Shit.

Dammit.

[exhales]

[Dan] What's wrong Claire?

I forgot to put another bag.

I knew I was forgetting something.

Actually I didn't know I was forgetting something.

All right, I forgot it.

Last time I put another bag in it.

Dammit, hold on.

No, I have to care because it really works so much better

if there's a bag over it.

It really helps prevent any water

from getting into the chocolate

as it's coming out of the bag

which those two things don't really mix well.

[vacuum sealer whirs]

[wistful piano music]

There we go.

So I have to wait for all of these to come up to 115.

They'll be fully melted.

And I wanna actually unmold my Twix filling.

So mission accomplished

because the caramel has adhered nicely to the cookie.

Right now I'm just holding on to the caramel

it's not separating.

On some of them the caramel is a little bit longer

than the cookie itself

so I'm gonna also trim that.

I don't want there to be too much caramel overall

relative to the cookie.

It's,

this show is 79% crafting.

But that's why I like it.

So know all I wanna do

before I get this back into the fridge to chill

is use the heat gun

to just soften those caramel edges a little bit

so they're not quite so right angled.

They look so good.

Back into the fridge so it really sets up again.

I'm just massaging the chocolate

to make sure that there's no,

I don't feel any bits of chocolate that haven't melted yet

are still hard.

All right, I think this is good.

So I'm gonna take this down to 84.

I'm going to sit here just massaging the chocolate

to makes sure that everything inside the bag hits this temp.

I'm gonna turn it back up now to 90.

I wanna agitate constantly.

I will pull out the smaller bag,

dry it off,

take it out of the outer bag.

And I'm gonna do the tempered test

on a little offset spatula

just to make sure.

It looks pretty good.

It's not so much that it's shiny

it's that there's like a satin finish.

I'm not sure that I really did it.

I feel hopeful.

I'm doing the,

I'm coating the bottoms.

So here's my plan.

Basically one-by-one, a stripe of chocolate on the bottom,

and then... Press it so it spreads.

Press it, yes.

Dylan, you wanna pull out an actual Twix

and we can look at it?

[Dylan] The bottom is like maybe a quarter

of the thickness of the sides.

[Claire] Oh interesting, okay.

[Dylan] Really thin. So I can pretty

[Dylan] thin. Really thin, yeah.

[Claire] All right, that's good.

So we'll come back in about 10 minutes and double check.

See what they look like on the bottom.

What I kind of like about using the Silpat

is the Silpat has a bit of like a pattern

which is cool

'cause I think it kind of recalls a little bit

the pattern on the bottom of the Twix.

Now I'm gonna work one-by-one

and just use a little parring knife

to trim off any excess chocolate.

[punchy jazz drums]

So I'm gonna get these back into the fridge

to chill for just a few minutes before I start to enrobe.

Maybe I should do freezer

and then they'll really cool down.

Let me do freezer.

After just a couple of minutes in the freezer

I think they're definitely cold enough.

And I think we are ready to enrobe.

I'm trying to work quickly.

[upbeat jazz music]

My main concern right now

is that I'm using a lot of the chocolate

and that I'm not gonna have a lot left for the second tray.

The first ones look really good

but it's definitely setting up quickly

on such cold candies.

Damn.

Maybe I shouldn't have frozen them.

Where the hell did that spatula go?

[tense electronic music]

Now the problem is the other ones have set up much too much

to get any texture in it.

[Dan] Can you explain like the whole situation?

No.

I don't wanna talk about it.

[Dan] Come on.

I hate chocolate ones.

I'm not doing a chocolate one anymore.

It's so annoying.

This is like literally the last step.

[Dan] Here. It's a little unclear

what's happening right now.

I don't wanna talk about it.

It's unclear because I'm not saying anything.

Just give me a second to process.

Why did I do so many at once?

Some of them look okay.

But I think basically the problems where the following:

the chocolate set up super quickly...

How'd the temper go Claire?

Sorry bad timing?

Like you gotta go away and come back.

All right.

I'll go.

All right.

I love you Brad.

I can't talk to you right now.

I wanted it to like [exhales] set up slowly

and I thought I could go back in with an offset spatula

and make a little pattern across the top.

But it set up almost immediately.

I should have done like two at a time.

And now I'm really worried

because I think the layer is so thick.

At least I know I tempered the chocolate.

These were the last two I did

so they were the slowest to set.

I was trying to go for something similar to that

on all of them and it didn't really work.

But now I'm ready

'cause now I need, I need,

I need your sympathy.

I'm not ready. [laughs]

Claire, you seem a little pissed off.

I'm not happy.

Very unhappy.

You guys are ruining a great person okay.

[Claire] [laughs] yeah.

The chocolate's not fully set.

[Brad] Good, all right. What, what,

[Claire] What just happened though?

[Brad] Well it snapped through the...

[Claire] Oh, oh well. the caramel.

Too buttery Claire.

Brad, how do you?

Where are you going?

I gotta wash my hands.

[Dan] It feels like he's leaving.

Yeah, he's just walking away from my misery.

It's a delicious treat.

It's a delicious candy.

It's not a Twix.

But?

It don't taste like a Twix.

I think you're very close.

It could just be the amount of chocolate.

You were like, you're far off,

you've made something different

and then you tell me I'm close.

I didn't say you were far off.

Do you think if I put a heat gun...

And try to like... And melted it.

I think you're gonna make 'em.

It's worth the shot on one.

I think you gonna make up.

I think it's gonna be hard to control.

Yeah.

[punchy drums]

All right.

So that worked assumingly really well.

I wanna transfer this one off

'cause I love the way that it looks.

I don't want it to get more heat

from the gun pointing on other bars.

So I'm gonna try to remove it

and get it off to this parchment.

[punchy drums]

[laughs]

Well I started laughing that was bad.

10 minutes ago I could not talk

and I was gonna throw something at the director [laughs].

Now I feel a little better.

This part is actually kind of fun.

Thank god for heat guns.

We couldn't do this show without it.

[pans clanging]

I wanna get these in the fridge

before anything else happens to them

so they can really finish setting.

At least they look neat.

Uniform.

This was more of a first pass I think for the final.

So you know, it's not that bad.

It's not quite where I want it to be.

Definitely has a pull.

I guess it's going too well.

I'm over it.

But I still have 10 more that are uncovered

that I can coat again tomorrow

with some tempered chocolate

and hopefully those are the best ones yet

and I can avoid some of these issues.

I wanted to look at the ones I did yesterday

just to kind of see how they ended up looking

and how that chocolate looks.

That one isn't tempered because it was tempered

and then in order to thin it out I rewarmed it

and that rewarming broke the temper.

You got your patented slightly holographic...

The patented fat bloom?

Yeah exactly.

Of the chocolate? But we'll call it that

Which is branding, you call it the Safitz sheen.

That's brilliant.

And everyone is like, We don't know how she got

that iridescent glow.

Well if this doesn't work out

that's what I will be doing at the end of this episode

and say that I did it on purpose.

Yeah, with the patented Safitz sheen.

Ding.

Okay. I'm curious

and I'm sure you've covered this

if you get

do get it to

an ability to detach your caramel from your cookie.

Dammit Carla. Sorry.

Because that was not part of it.

And then yesterday Brad was like,

If it doesn't have the divots on the top

then I don't want it.

Or on the bottom too Claire.

If I was told about the caramel nibbling

then I would have put a layer of chocolate

in between the cookie and the caramel

which I skipped. Clearly they've done.

Which they've done and I skipped that.

See the little holes?

Oops.

Today I have the second half of the bars,

the cookie with the caramel on top

that has been in the fridge

and I'm going to do everything again.

At least the tempering seemed to go well.

I want the bars to be cold.

But they're gonna be fridge cold not freezer cold.

I think I'm going to create

lots of smaller bags of chocolate

so that I can go two at a time

and coat them carefully

and then I'm not worried about the chocolate

hardening too quickly.

[punchy jazz music]

Here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a temper test.

All right I think it's tempered, I think its fine.

I just, that's,

okay.

[punchy jazz music]

What I'm doing differently

is I'm gonna focus more one-by-one.

And I'm also going to use the offset

and I'm gonna work more on coverage everywhere.

One-by-one.

Oh no, it's setting up so fast.

All right I'm not gonna do any texture on this one

because I think it's still a little bit cold.

Let me try with another one.

[upbeat jazz music]

That can work even more quickly than I thought.

Brad this part's not easy.

Oh I bet.

Nothing about this is easy Claire.

[Claire] Nope.

What went wrong is it's just setting up so fast now.

I have to immediately go in with the offset

to wipe off excess.

And maybe then do the little crosshatch

and then do the taps.

And I think that'll give you what I'm looking for.

[punchy jazz drums]

[laughs] Overall I think I did the best that I could

under the circumstances.

I feel good about the sous vide chocolate tempering method,

finally.

I feel good about the shape

and overall dimensions of everything.

I think it's, you know,

it's not identical but it's very very close to the Twix,

to the original.

And I'm glad that I made a really nice shortbread,

a very good caramel,

and well-tempered dark chocolate.

So I think all the components

are functioning the way they should

and serving a purpose.

They could look worse.

They could look a lot worse Claire.

There we go.

That's what I'm going for.

Every one's tempered... Is this finished.

Yeah. Are you done?

Fini.

Get the knife.

We gotta cut one open.

Hey. Wait.

Don't you wanna try with the pull?

Ooo.

Do you wanna try eating it...

let's do what Carla was saying,

do you wanna try eating the caramel off the top?

Why?

There's no dots on the cookies.

Wait, look, look, look, look, look.

What a nice job. It came off.

All right. All right separation passed.

All right.

It melts in my Mouth?

Hands though Claire.

The original?

Oh is that what's going on?

No. Yeah, we're

we're gonna go with that.

When you bite into it you're not like,

Oh my god, you mimicked the Twix!

Right, right.

But I guess that's not the show right.

Depends on the episode. You've Claire'd it.

I think you've Claire'd a Twixie.

[laughs] A Twix. Do you need to take two?

A Twixie?

What'd I say, Twixie?

Uh-huh.

You made a Twixie.

Thanks.

[laughs] I love it, okay.

Whoa. Whoa, oh boy.

That is entertainment Claire.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Well at least I can make some caramel.

Wow.

This is so much better.

Yes!

No one said that yet.

Your caramel tastes better. It is.

And the chocolate. Brad thought it was

too buttery.

I disagreed. No.

No, no, no, no, no. I know.

I know.

I mean that was nonsense. What does that guy know?

Exactly.

Oo, that's very nice.

Very nice Claire.

[laughs] I think that the most successful part of this

was the caramel

which I weirdly kind of only did once.

Wow.

I think the chocolate is

just clearly like

superior. Oh, I thought you gonna say

well-tempered [laughs].

Um, but yes, thank you.

My only criticism of these

is that I think there could more cookie actually.

I feel like I disagree Oh, interesting.

Because I feel that because you packed so much more flavor

into that much less cookie

it's the perfect balance.

Oo, okay, I love that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that. Don't be too hard

on yourself Claire. All right.

National treasure!

I'm gonna take that. Okay, cool.

This wasn't so much the making Twix episode

as it was the chocolate tempering episode.

I'm going from being terrible

to approaching maybe halfway decent.

There's like the moment of despair where I realized

something failed, it didn't work

and I know I have to do it again

and then I get super frustrated and irritated.

But coming back,

repeating it,

it always turns out better.

So that's the lesson in all of these.

[punchy jazz music]

Here's how you make gourmet Twix.

[Claire] To make the cookie

in the bowl of the stand mixer fitted with the paddle

beat two sticks plus three tablespoons

room temperature, unsalted butter

and three quarter cups granulated sugar

until smooth and combined.

Add two and a half cups all purpose flour

a third of a cup white rice flour

and one and a half teaspoons kosher salt

beat on low just until combined.

Wrap dough in plastic and chill until cold.

Roll out chilled shortbread dough

to a scant one centimeter thickness

and cut into bars 1.8 centimeters wide

and nine centimeters long

and bake at 325 until pale and crisp all over.

Let cool completely.

Use a fine rasp grater to shave off any irregular edges

and create smooth even sides.

Place the cookies in a dehydrator

and let dry for about 30 minutes.

Make the caramel.

Combine one and a half cups sugar

two tablespoons corn syrup

an eighth of a teaspoon cream of tartar

and a third of a cup water in a small saucepan

and stir over medium heat to dissolve sugar.

Bring to a boil and cook

washing down sides with a pastry brush

until you have a dark amber caramel.

Remove from heat and stir in six tablespoons unsalted butter

a third of a cup heavy cream and one teaspoon kosher salt.

Line three cinder loaf pans with parchment paper

and grease.

Pour caramel into a pan

to a depth of about 0.4 centimeters.

Chill until caramel is set.

Remove caramel from pans and cut crosswise into bars

about 1.3 centimeters wide.

Place each cookie all over the top of the strip of caramel

and use a heat gun to gently warm the caramel

so it softens and slumps slightly over cookie.

Chill while you temper the chocolate.

Temper the chocolate.

Coat the bottoms of the cookies in a thin layer of chocolate

and place on top of a Silpat-lined baking sheet.

Chill to set chocolate

and trim any excess chocolate from around sides of cookies.

Pipe tempered chocolate

over top of chilled cookie and caramel

and quickly use an offset spatula

to texture the top of the bar.

Chill until set.

Your show's like type two fun Claire.

What's type two fun?

When it starts off like, God, this sucks, this is hard.

But then afterwards it's like a good story.

You know, it's like good to remember.

What do you call something that's not fun in the moment

and not fun later?

That's called,

that just sucks.

That just sucks.

Some of them just suck.

I'm trying to think of actual fun

that I've had on this show.

Nothing [laughs] nothing's coming to mind.