Cooking from the homeland - Stroopwafel week

I admit the title 'cooking from the homeland' may be slightly over stretching my Dutch heritage, but nonetheless, the pressure was on the get this one right! Yes, week three already, caramel week was in its full sticky glory. Not only did it dawn on me that I've never actually made caramel but this week looked particularly industrial, with temperature gauges and wafer makers making their way into the baking tent. So my commitment to this challenge has reached new heights, having invested 23 British pounds on a wafer maker which I will probably never use again. Was it worth it I hear you ask? That is still to be decided. There was much controversy over this technical challenge through almost all of the bakers having got it wrong, so I didn't have much optimism for this challenge. 

The Bake

Having waited five days for this wafer maker to be delivered you can understand my late timing of this blog post. I had a few hurdles I had to overcome, mostly due to my laziness and lack of accurate ingredients- I decided to be creative. I used golden syrup instead of maple syrup, due to having forgotten to buy it. And the butter I wanted to use was questionably past the best before date.

The bake was actually reasonable easy, maybe the easiest of the technical challenges but definitely the most time-consuming. Waiting for the sugar to completely melt is like watching paint dry, I waited an hour then gave up. The wafer making, on the other hand, was very enjoyable and cutting it open was very easy. 

The Result

These little caramel treats appearance far excelled my expectation, however, the taste seemed to divide opinion. I think the issue was due to the excessive vanilla essence put into the recipe. Now maybe Prue loves it that way but I had a Tesco own brand one and it just tasted far too medicinal and frankly, I couldn't even finish it.. which is saying quite a lot with my sweet tooth! Whether it was the Tescos own brand vanilla essence, the questionable butter or the substitution of maple syrup that affected the taste- that will remain a mystery. Also, I had the same issue with the caramel becoming grainy like the other bakers, Horray, this means I'm basically the same standard right? Anyways, onward and upwards, and on to the next bake. Think I shall leave the stroopwafels to the dutch!