[1] Recchiuti Peanut Butter Pucks, the best peanut butter cups you’ll find (photos #1, #2, #3, #4 © Recchiuti Confections).

[2] What’s inside the pucks: homemade peanut butter.

[3] Peanut Butter Pearls, for when you only want a tiny taste.

[4] Casting pearls before palates.

[5] The original salted caramel dates back to France in the 1970s (photo © Chocolat Le Roux).

[6] Our favorite salted caramel is the Lavender Sea Salt Caramel from Lillie Belle (photo © Lillie Belle Farms).

[7] Inside a chocolate-covered caramel (photo © Alma Chocolate).

[8] A fine chocolate bar with crunchy sea salt (photo © Cárdenas Chocolate).

[9] Salted caramel chocolate tart from Gramercy Tavern. Here’s the recipe from the New York Times (photo © Jim Wilson | New York Times).

We like everything made by San Francisco chocolatier, Michael Recchiuti. While we have enjoyed many a box of beautiful bonbons, artisan chocolate bars, and chocolate-covered caramels, we also love his take on peanut butter cups.

His Peanut Butter Pucks are a wonderful treat.

If you’re a fan of Reese’s but think there could be a more glorious peanut butter cup—one made with superior chocolate and better peanut butter—Recchiuti’s Peanut Butter Pucks may be a dream come true.

Don’t concern yourself that Recchiuti Peanut Butter Pucks are pricier than Reese’s: You only live once!
 
 
RECCHIUTI PEANUT BUTTER PUCKS

Peanut Butter Pucks are made with organic Valencia peanut butter folded into Recchiuti’s artisan dark milk chocolate and finished with a sprinkle of salt (photos #1 and #2).

Why Valencia peanuts? The Valencia has a sweet flavor and is the peanut of choice for all-natural peanut butter. An exclusive peanut, it accounts for less than 1% of U.S. peanut production.

More than 80% of the peanuts grown in the U.S. are a variety called runner peanuts. They are the peanuts used to make most of the peanut butter and PB confections like peanut butter cups. Here’s more about the four different types of peanuts grown in the U.S.

As for the pinch of salt: Salt is popularly used to enhance the flavor of artisan chocolate and caramels. See a broader explanation in the section below.

Each puck is .78 ounces (a Reese’s PB cup weighs .74 ounces).

Get your Peanut Butter Pucks here.
 
 
RECCHIUTI PEANUT BUTTER PEARLS

If you don’t want an entire Peanut Butter Puck, Recchiuti has packed the flavor into a little round nugget, the bite-size Peanut Butter Pearl (photos #3 and #4).

These dragees*, with a bit of crunch from the hard sugar coating, can be a daily indulgence with a cup of coffee, or for special use, e.g. as a garnish on ice cream, cakes, or cupcakes.

The little bites are a perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate.

Get your Peanut Butter Pearls here.

> The history of peanut butter.

> The history of peanut butter cups.

> The history of peanuts.

> The history of chocolate.
 
 
PEANUT & PEANUT BUTTER HOLIDAYS

More occasions to treat yourself to Peanut Butter Pucks and Peanut Butter Pearls:

 
 
SALTED CARAMEL & SALTED CHOCOLATE

The salted caramel, which became a hit in the U.S. at the beginning of this century, was popularized in 1977 by the French pastry chef Henri Le Roux. In the 1960s, after apprenticing at his parents’ pastry shop in Pont-l’Abbé, a commune in Brittany in northwestern France, he went to school in Switzerland to study candy making.

He returned to Brittany to open a confectionary store, Maison Le Roux, in the commune of Quiberon. This original store has been joined by a number across France, including four in Paris.

Brittany is known for its fine salted butter, and in an attempt to offer something different, Le Roux devised a salted butter caramel with crushed nuts, using Breton demi-sel (lightly salted) butter instead of the unsalted butter used to make conventional caramels.

The result: caramels au beurre salé, caramels with salted butter.

The crushed nuts were Dauphiné walnuts, Piedmont hazelnuts, and Valencia almonds.

His caramels were named the “Best Confectionery in France” (Meilleur Bonbon de France) at the Paris Salon International de la Confiserie in 1980. Salted caramels took off across France. Here’s more of his story.

In the late 1990s, the Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé introduced salted butter and caramel (i.e., salted caramel) macaroons. By 2000, high-end chefs started to add a bit of salt to both their caramel and chocolate recipes, including salted caramel sauce for ice cream and other desserts.

The concept jumped across the pond, and salted caramel became the trend in the U.S. and elsewhere. Just about every artisan chocolatier sold fleur de sel caramels, using the special French sea salt. Fine chefs quickly adopted the concept and began combining sea salt with a variety of sweets, including caramel and chocolate.

As with many food trends, salted caramel quickly became an obsession of foodies. American chocolatiers made them enrobed in chocolate. President Barack Obama mentioned a fondness for Fran’s Salt Caramels, covered in chocolate and topped with French grey salt or smoked salt.

In 2008 the flavor leapt into the mass market, first with Häagen-Dazs salted caramel ice cream and Starbucks salted caramel hot chocolate (and subsequently, coffees).

Next came hundreds of products, found everywhere from supermarkets to small stores to big discounters: salted caramel added to everything from protein bars to vodka [source]. The flavor has retained its popularity.
 
 
What About Salted Chocolate?

Pierre Hermé is credited with being the first to make salted chocolate. He sprinkled fleur de sel on chocolate, also in the late 1990s. Later came his scrumptious chocolate and sea salt cookies.

As with salted caramels, artisan chocolatiers in the U.S. and beyond followed suit. Top pastry chefs added crunchy crystals of sea salt to everything from chocolate caramel tarts to molten chocolate “lava” cakes. Magazines printed recipes for salted chocolate chip cookies.
 
 
Why Are Salted Sweets So Popular?

Salt is a natural flavor enhancer that brings out the flavor in all foods, including sweet foods. That’s why you’ll always see a pinch of salt in recipes for cakes, cookies, and pies.

In confections, salt adds a counter-dimension to the sweetness of both caramel and chocolate and suppresses the bitterness of dark chocolate.

Salt balances out flavors and brings out subtle nuances. An easy example to test is how critical to adding flavor to the water used to boil foods like pasta, potatoes, and rice.

While we don’t regularly salt our food, we never boil a pot of water without a tablespoon or two of it.
 
 
________________

*A dragée (drah-zhay) originally referred to sugar-coated, so one did not have to swallow a “bitter pill.” Today, it refers to a small piece of candy enclosed in a hard sugar shell. Jordan almonds are a classic example, and at the other extreme, so are M&M’s. The tiny hard gold and silver balls made from sugar, that are used to decorate cakes, cookies, and confections, are another example of dragées. They are coated in edible gold or silver. Dragée’s origin word, in ancient Greece, tragema, refers to dried fruits or other sweetmeats.

Today’s recipe celebrates St. Patrick’s Day: a traditional Irish apple pie called an amber apple pie. The recipe is below.

Apples have been an important source of food in Ireland for thousands of years. Apple trees are one of the few that grow well in the difficult Irish climate.

While crabapples are the variety native to Ireland, other varieties have been cultivated for centuries including Ard Cairn Russet, Lady’s Finger of Offaly, and Kerry Pippin.

An Amber Apple Pie has a filling of grated apples cooked down into a sweet purée, and the top is fluffy meringue.

The recipe is from Allie Roomberg of Baking a Moment for Stemilt Apples.

You can use a store-bought crust, or Allie’s favorite recipe for homemade pie crust.

Fill it with a sweet apple filling that’s made with Granny Smith apples, egg yolks, sugar, and lemon juice.

Once it’s baked and cooled you can top it with an airy toasted meringue.

The recipe below calls for Granny Smith apples, but Allie used Pink Lady. “Both are great options and hold up well in the oven,” she says. “Pink Lady apples just make for a slightly sweeter tasting pie.”

> The history of apples.

> The history of pie.

> The history of St. Patrick’s Day.
 
 
BAKING A TRADITIONAL IRISH APPLE PIE

Apple Amber Pie is little more than grated apples cooked down into a sweet, silky purée and topped with meringue.

It all begins with a good pie crust. You can use store-bought or use my favorite recipe for homemade pie crust from scratch (photo #2). Just roll it out to a little larger than your pie dish, trim off the excess, crimp the edge, and give it a head start in the oven.

Fill it with a sweet apple filling that’s made with Granny Smith apples, egg yolks, sugar, and lemon juice. Once it’s baked and cooled, it’s topped with an airy toasted meringue.

While the recipe calls for Granny Smith apples (photo #3), Allie used Pink Lady. Both are great options and hold up well in the oven, Pink Lady apples (photo #4) just make for a slightly sweeter-tasting pie!

 
 
RECIPE: AMBER APPLE PIE (IRISH APPLE PIE)
 
Ingredients

[1] Amber apple pie with a meringue top (photos #1 and #2 © Allie Roomberg | Baking A Moment).

[2] Allie’s favorite a href=”https://bakingamoment.com/simply-perfect-homemade-pie-crust/” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>pie crust recipet.

Granny Smith Apples[/caption]
[3] Granny Smith apples (photos #3 and #4 © Good Eggs).

[4] Pink Lady apples.

May 15th is National Espresso Martini Day. Long before the first Espresso Martini, the first known recipe for a Martini, printed in 1888 and called the Martinez, lists its ingredients as gin, sweet vermouth, orange Curaçao, gum, and bitters, garnished with a lemon twist.

That sweet profile is closer to what modern bartenders call a Martini. Only a Dry Martini, made with gin or vodka, is a classic Martini. Everything else takes the Martini back to its Martinez roots in the 19th century.

In the decades following the Martinez, the drink dropped its sweet ingredients and evolved into the dry Martini—possibly with the emergence of London dry gin* and Martini and Rossi’s dry vermouth at the end of the 19th century.

The first known dry Martini recipe with gin and dry vermouth appears in 1904 [source].

Then came the Vodka Martini. We can’t pinpoint its first appearance, but in the U.S. at least, records show it being served in New York right after the appeal of Prohibition (December 5, 1933) [source].

Then, in the 1980s, many different flavors of Martini proliferated—mostly sweet flavors with added liqueur, taking the drink back to the Martinez days.

Check out these 50+ Martini recipes, from cinnamon to strawberry-balsamic. As you can tell from these two, most of these Martinis are sweet—back to the original Martinez.

We’re here to celebrate National Espresso Martini Day (the history of the Espresso Martini is below. But first, an Espresso Martini recipe from Kástra Elión vodka, the first premium vodka distilled from Greek olives. There’s more about the brand below.

> The history of the Martini.

> The history of espresso.

> The history of the Espresso Martini is below.

> The history of vodka.
 
 
RECIPE: ESPRESSO MARTINI

Instead of two ingredients in a Dry Martini—gin or vodka and vermouth—the Espresso Martini substitutes expresso liqueur for the dry vermouth and adds two more ingredients: cold brew coffee and simple syrup.

For a less sweet drink, eliminate the simple syrup. The liqueur has plenty of sweetness.

Kāstra Eliōn vodka has no hint of olives; you can use any vodka.

Most vodka is made from fermented grains such as corn, rice, rye, sorghum, or wheat; although grapes and other fruits (such as olives), as well as potatoes, are also used. You can even distill vodka from plain sugar!

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. ADD the ingredients to a shaker full of ice and shake hard for 30 seconds. Strain into a Martini glass.

2. GARNISH with coffee beans.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE ESPRESSO MARTINI

The creation of the Espresso Martini is attributed to British bartending guru Dick Bradsell, a mixologist who is credited with revolutionizing the London cocktail scene in the 1980s.

He is said to have created the drink—originally called the Vodka Espresso and then the Pharmaceutical Stimulant—at Fred’s Club in the late 1980s.

As the story goes, a customer asked for a drink to “wake her up” and he combined vodka, espresso, coffee liqueur, and sugar that he shook into a frothy drink [source].

Some bartenders then added a garnish of three coffee beans, following the custom of a glass of the coffee liqueur, Sambuca. The three beans are said to represent health, wealth, and happiness [source].

The Espresso Martini is made with vodka. Per the comment at the top of the article, no one can pinpoint when the first vodka Martinis were made (in Europe in the 1930s or earlier?). But in the 1960s, vodka got a big boost from a man named Bond, James Bond. Agent 007’s “vodka Martini, shaken not stirred” catapulted this now-classic cocktail to instant stardom.

 
 
ABOUT KÁSTRA ELIÓN VODKA

Kástra Elión* Vodka, made in Greece, is the first premium vodka distilled from green Greek olives.

The vodka is distilled from wheat and a mixture of olives hand-picked in the town of Nafpaktos, a historic port town situated on the Gulf of Corinth in western Greece. The town has a castle, or kástra in Greek, which gives its name to the vodka.

The name roughly means “castles of the olive groves.” Kástra is the plural of kástro, Greek for a castle, and eliá is the word for olive.

The bottle is actually a reusable ceramic container, you can use for water or even as a flower vase.

On the nose there’s a hint of both saltiness and a fruity/vanilla sweetness, and it’s undeniably clean and pure. Tasting it, this is one of the most interesting vodkas I’ve tried in a while, and I’m not saying that just because I love Greece and its food and drink.

The flavor is clean and pure, velvety smooth. It’s a lovely sipping vodka.

Except for a slightly salty note (other vodkas can have a pepper note), it doesn’t have any hint of olives—just as other vodkas have no hint of the grain from which they’re distilled.

Stin ygeiá sas (“cheers,” in Greek).

[1] An Espresso Martini (photos #1 and #2 © Kástra Elión vodka).

[2] Kástra Elión vodka is made from green Greek olives. The bottle is reusable ceramic.

[3] It’s hard, but not impossible, to find espresso liqueur. Most of the brands are coffee liqueur (photo © Bottega Spa).

[4] Mr. Black cold brew coffee liqueur in an Espresso Martini (photo © Mr. Black).

[5] Cold brew coffee (photo © Takeya Cold Brew Coffee Maker).

[6] Classic simple syrup (it’s available in different flavors). You can buy it or make it with this recipe (photo © Sonoma Syrup).

________________
 
*London dry gins are flavored with juniper, complemented by touches of other botanicals: citrus and other fruits, herbs, spices, and/or others (bark, roots, e.g.), depending on the brand.

[1] Green Goddess salad dressing. Here’s the recipe (photo © Martha Stewart).

[2] Green mint chocolate chip cookies Here’s the recipe (photo © ).

If you’re hunting for St. Patrick’s Day recipes, take a look at our collection. We have 100 delicious recipes for:

 
Some are authentic Irish or Irish-American dishes, and others, like the dip in the photo, are simply a celebratory green.

Take a look!
 
 
THE HISTORY OF ST. PATRICK’S DAY

St. Patrick’s Day, celebrated on March 17th, commemorates St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

St. Patrick is believed to have brought Christianity to Ireland. He was born in Britain, around 387 C.E. When he was sixteen years old, he was captured by Irish raiders and brought to Ireland as a slave.

During his captivity, he became a Christian and, after six years of servitude, he escaped and returned to Britain. However, he felt called to return to Ireland to spread Christianity and spent many years traveling throughout the country, preaching and converting the pagan peoples to Christianity.

St. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leafed clover, to explain the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity. This is why the shamrock has become a symbol of St. Patrick’s Day. (The name shamrock comes from Irish seamróg, which means “young clover.”)

The first St. Patrick’s Day parade is believed to have taken place in New York City in 1762, when Irish soldiers serving in the British army marched through the streets. The parade became an annual event in New York City and subsequently in other cities with large Irish populations, such as Boston and Chicago.

In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day was originally a religious holiday, and the first official St. Patrick’s Day parade there did not take place until 1931, in Dublin.

Today, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated by people of all backgrounds around the world, with parades, festivals, and other events that often involve wearing green, drinking beer (which may be coored green), and enjoying Irish food and music.