Malted Graham Sandwich Bar

Last week I blogged about the Moirs Malted Graham Sandwich Bar that both a friend and a cousin had remembered and mentioned in conversation. And this week, I'm presenting my take on that same candy bar. Why? Well, life is short and when my brain fixates on something, it's best to just go with it. 

So here we are.

Graham crackers, I thought, would be the easy part of this endeavour. I located a recipe that looked good and had solid reviews. I mixed up the dough, using Bourbon Madagascar vanilla and Newfoundland honey that I've been saving for a special occasion. I followed the recipe to the letter and even chilled the dough before and after rolling. I selected what I thought would be the perfect size square cutter and I spaced them generously on the cookie sheet. And you guessed it! By the time they finished baking, my graham squares were a full half inch larger than intended. Note to self, next time choose the smallest cutter size. 

Next I turned to the malted cream filling. After giving it some thought, I decided that a whipped ganache was the way to go. It was an interesting decision considering that I've never made whipped ganache before, but from what I knew about it, I thought it would produce a creamier texture for the filling and, by whipping it, it should turn lighter in colour. So I researched malted ganache recipes. Finding some made with white chocolate and some with milk, I wasn't quite sure how to proceed. But knowing that white chocolate is often sickly sweet, I decided to try something new yet again and made the ganache with two parts white chocolate and three parts milk chocolate. I dissolved the malt powder in the heated cream before pouring it over the chopped chocolate. After leaving it for 5 minutes, it whisked into a beautiful ganache. The malt flavour is a little light, so I might increase the powder if I make it again, but the flavour is so delicious that I'm wondering why malted milk truffles aren't a thing. 

The following day, after the ganache had fully set, I brought it back to room temperature and whipped it with a hand mixer. Sure enough, it became paler in colour the more I whipped it. I put the ganache in a piping bag and sat down to begin the process of matching graham crackers of a similar size and sandwiching them together with the whipped ganache. Then I put them in the fridge for a few minutes to set up. 

Next I tempered a lot of milk chocolate. More than I normally work with because I knew these chonky sandwiches would require a lot of chocolate. What I hadn't quite sorted out was how to dip them. I had a large fork used for dipping Oreo cookies that I thought would work, but the chocolate was a little too thick. While many recipes will instruct you to thin out the chocolate with Crisco or paraffin wax, in the chocolatier world, the viscosity of chocolate is more commonly altered using additional cocoa butter. That's not something I've ever tried and I also didn't have any on hand. And I couldn't bring myself to add a lesser quality ingredient to my expensive couverture chocolate!

And so I decided to try a technique I've seen while watching Hercules Candy on YouTube. "Quick Steve," as he is called, uses a puddle method for tempering chocolate and coating items, like snack clubs (pretzels coated in peanut butter enrobed in chocolate and rolled in crushed potato chips) or turtle pops (marshmallows covered in caramel coated in chocolate and rolled in pecans). I grabbed a few latex gloves from my pandemic allotment and thought it couldn't be that hard to fill one's hand with chocolate and coat a cookie sandwich.

I was wrong. 

This is not as easy as Quick Steve makes it look. I guess, like everything, it takes time to develop the technique, the coordination, the feel (and he's had a lifetime of practice). I did the best I could coating them, but it was messy as all heck. I also struggled to get good coverage on the edges. My kingdom for an enrobing machine!

Seriously, though, the hand coating worked better than the fork and I imagine if I did a few hundred of these, I'd get it down to a science. On a few I added a decorative swirl with my finger. And then I popped everything into the fridge to crystallize. 

The end result?

That's one delicious sandwich. I can understand why people still talk about them. I'd probably make a few tweaks if I made them again -- a smaller cookie cutter, a chocolate with a higher fluidity, a little more malt in the whipped ganache -- but I'm not angry at it. 

I'll be very curious to see how these store. One potential issue is the graham cracker absorbing moisture from the whipped ganache and softening as a result. If that does happen, then some sort of barrier, like a thin coat of chocolate on the graham cracker before sandwiching, might be necessary. Time will also tell if these will survive a freeze-thaw cycle. I've had a few requests to bring these home next month, and the whipped ganache won't be stable enough to sit for a month, I suspect. So into the freezer go a few of these for sure. 

Hopefully the recipients will enjoy them and savour a memory from childhood while they're at it. 

So much power in such a small sandwich.

Postscript: On day four, my boyfriend tried one and the graham crackers were completely softened, not unlike a wagon wheel. He still thought they were good. I personally have no idea if the original was crispy or firm when biting into it, or if it was softer and chewier. But maybe softer and chewier is ok? Someone who had the real deal will have to let me know!