Crazy Cooking

A new season of Masterchef marks the beginning of another year in Perth. This is the 3rd season we've watched since arriving in Perth. As with previous years, it inspires me to cook. I've never done any recipes from the chefs before. They're either too hard or they have ingredients you just can't get. The 1st pressure test of this season saw contestants cooking Shannon's Chocolate Peanut Bar, inspired by Sneakers. I had a look at the ingredients list & thought to myself, "I can do this." So I did.

There're many elements to the dessert. But unlike the contestants, I didn't have the time constraints they had. I took my time & the element I was most unhappy with was the tempered chocolate. It was tempered properly. But I didn't want to spend money buying the pallet knife & so I used a spatula to spread it instead. I didn't get it thin enough & had to pour more of the honey caramel sauce to melt it, causing the dessert to be overly sweet. 

I got all the other elements right. I omitted the tempered chocolate & honey caramel sauce on subsequent serves & they worked so well together. This is by far the craziest cook I've ever done. It's not very practical to do for own consumption as there was a lot of wastage. But it was a good experience & I got to temper chocolate for the 1st time. 

Element 1: Candied peanuts.

Element 2: Peanut caramel.
Element 3: Brown sugar crumble.
Element 4: Tempered chocolate.

Element 5: Honey nougat.

Element 6: Peanut ice cream.

Element 7: Chocolate parfait.
Element 8: Peanut crumble.
Element 9: Honey caramel.