Last week was the first time I had ever baked for my own sweet stall! It was certainly an adventure and also a great learning experience. I have a whole new respect for the amount of work that goes into producing food for a market stall. The hardest part, it has to be said, was the shopping and hauling my giant stash of sugar to the car! The theme of the market was “Guilty Pleasures” and was all about those sweet and salty snacks that we all love from time to time. My guilty pleasures were honeycomb clusters, coconut bites and some delicious biscuits.
Once packaged up nicely, these sweets make great gifts and are a cinch to make. The honeycomb (or Crunchie Clusters) I had made before and are always a hit with those with a sweet tooth. The coconut (or Bounty Bites) were a new addition to my repertoire. They are a little less sweet, than the real bounty (or Mounds if you’re reading this in the USA), but they tasted like real coconut to me. The biscuits (or Nibble Me Biscuits) were simply some shortcake men decorated with colourful icing – some as pirates hence the name. All in all, the day was a success, and gave me a whole new perspective on the market stall. It’s a long day in the cold waiting for someone to buy your sweets, but it’s worth it when you get a sale and get to meet a bunch of new people. I was blessed to have a fantastically chatty and lovely market stall mate, Catherine from The Runcible Spoon. She was good enough to share her salty licious caramel rice crispy squares and yummy toffee apple zillionaire shortbreads which I have been munching on ever since. A huge thanks to Aoife from I Can Has Cook? too for organsing the day and inviting us to take part Below is my reacipe for Bounty Bites.
Here’s how:
– 200g condensed milk
– 150 g desiccated coconut
– 50g of ground almonds (approx)
– 50g icing sugar, to taste (approx)
– 200g ounces dark chocolate
Begin by lining a large baking sheet with greaseproof paper. In large bowl, mix the condensed milk and coconut together with a spoon. Next add enough icing sugar and ground almonds to form a stiff dough. I don’t like very sweet bounty bites, so I didn’t add an enormous amount of sugar- however this is entirely up to you. Form the dough into small 1 cm balls. Place the balls on the lined baking sheet. Leave to set on a tray and leave to harden in the fridge overnight. The next day, melt the chocolate over a saucepan of boiling water. Coat the balls in melted choc and leave to set.
