If there is one sort of candy that Amy loves, it's molasses chips; her #2 would be "sea foam," also known as "sponge candy." Growing up, the only place that I remember having it was during the occasional family trip to Mystic Seaport when I was a child. I remember buying it in the general store for a penny (those were the days) and enjoying it until my sister told me it was made out of bad eggs which had turned foamy. Don't get me wrong, I still ate and enjoyed it -- I was a 10 year old boy after all! The next time had it was almost twenty years later when my then-girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife Amy told me the real ingredients when we saw it at Munsons, a local chocolatier. When I saw the recipe on our March Secret Recipe Club assigned blog, Melissa's Cuisine, AND saw how simple the recipe was, it was a no brainer to give it a try.
Chocolate-Covered Sea FoamIngredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup corn syrup
4 tsp baking soda
6 oz chocolate chips
Mix the sugar and the corn syrup in a saucepan over med/high heat until the temp reaches 305 degrees. Add the baking soda. (This will cause the mixture to rapidly foam to almost three times its original volume so be careful not to burn yourself!) Immediately pour it into a pre-greased baking pan and allow to cool. Score lines into the bottom of the candy to help you break it evenly. Heat chocolate in a double boiler and dip pieces. Placed dipped pieces onto wax paper for cooling.
It's that easy.
A big "Thank You" to Melissa for this recipe and the memories it brought back. I am looking forward to everyone's comments (Did you ever lie to your siblings?) as well as hoping my sister will read this and see how much she affected my culinary tastes. Probably not as much as when my mother told me that tapioca was really frog eggs; but that is a different story.
