#candy cap

[ketrinadrawsalot]

Fungi February: The candy cap's unique aroma makes it one of the few mushrooms that are just as good in desserts as in entrees. As a little brown mushroom, there are numerous lookalikes, some of which are toxic.

Disclaimer: Don’t rely on pictures of cute mushrooms with eyes to accurately identify edible mushrooms. At best the wrong one will taste bad, at worst it’ll be deadly!

[comparativetarot]

Ace of Cups. Art by Joseph Buckley, from The Mushroom Hunter's Tarot.

Pictured here is a basket full of Lactarius rubidus, or the candy cap mushroom. Named because of their sweet, maple-like aroma and flavor, candy caps are sought after by many chefs. They’re not consumed like most edible mushrooms, but instead used primarily as a flavoring. Drying the mushroom only intensifies its aroma and flavor, a single specimen enough to scent an entire house when dried slowly. They’re often used in cookies, ice creams, waffles, pancakes, breads, and many other sweet treats.

Keywords: Love, happiness, compassion, relationships, creativity.

[kiweetree]

Candycaps

@kiweetree / zroe.zroe

[fungusqueen]

Mushrooms found while camping. Candy Caps on the right and some kind of Bolete on the left

[whatchudrinkin]

Fungus Takes Over the World

Mushroom Ale is exactly what it sounds like, a beer made with mushrooms. Did you know you could make a beer with mushrooms? Neither did we. Then Old Town Brewing made one for the big Oregon Brewer’s Festival in 2015. We put it on the “nope” list, but a lot of people said it was good, or at least worth a try. Apparently, enough people liked it that they brought it back last year, and it was good. It was weirdly good. 

Another year, another bottle, and it’s still a great beer. Where most fruit, or vegetable, enhanced beers attempt to recreate said fruit, Mushroom Ale still tastes like beer. It’s a good beer, not just an interesting use of fungus. Candy cap mushrooms have a distinct maple flavor to them -- that’s why they’ve also been used by Salt and Straw to make ice cream. When added to Old Town’s Altbier base, candy caps sweeten the beer without adding any extra sugar, the same way a little vanilla extract makes cookies tastier. The earthiness of the fungus blends into toasty malt and the sharp bitterness. The result is dry and moreish and far more beer like than your average vegetable infused ale.

When it first came out, Jeff wrote on Beervana that Mushroom Ale “suggests a brave new, post-style world just out there in the near future.” He probably couldn’t have guessed how prescient he was. In 2017 saison can mean anything, half the new beers are brewed with some fruit or other, and no one is sure what an IPA is even supposed to look like anymore.

[fernandfungi]

Candy Cap Mushroom Bavarian Cream

I'm not a pastry chef, but I've been through enough rough spots (pastry chef giving notice and moving back to Naples Italy, pastry chef being neurotic and flaky, pastry chef being unskilled and needing guidance, did I say pastry chefs being neurotic and flaky?) that I can hold down the program if necessary until a…

If you're one of the lucky folks who bought our candy cap maple sugar, here's a beautiful recipe to try with it!

[fungusqueen]

Made these vegan candy cap cookies yesterday. I know people usually use this candy cap cookie recipe from David Arora’s book All That the Rain Promises, and More... but I used his technique of sautéing rehydrated (foraged) candy cap pieces in butter and worked that into a vegan sugar cookie recipe by NoraCooks. I also added candy cap powder to replace some of the flour/dry ingredients. I really didn’t use a lot of candy cap altogether, I used about 3 TBSP total of candy caps for a doubled recipe for 40-50 cookies.

I posted my own amended recipe at the bottom right if anyone is interested. Instead of using dairy butter, I use the vegan butter by Miyokos, which is my favorite for cooking because it’s palm oil free, browns nicely, and works with both savory and sweet dishes. 

[fernandfungi]

We've been working hard this week making mushroom-themed goods to sell this weekend at Seedy Sunday in Pembroke, ON. Alex ground up all the chaga he recently harvested by hand with a vintage meat grinder. I put together the herb & mushroom medicinal broth blend pictured which contains turkey tail, bolete, and shiitake mushrooms along with wild leek, burdock root, nettles, and sow thistle.

Here's a list of the goodies we'll be vending at Seedy Sunday:

* Candy Cap Maple Sugar * Chaga Maple Syrup * Chaga Tea * Chaga & Turkey Tail Hot Cocoa * Dried Wild Lobster Mushrooms * Elixir - Cacao Chaga * Elixir - Forest Fungi * Elixir - Reishi + Root * Reishi Infused Honey * Wild Forest Herb & Mushroom Broth Blend * Wilderness Mushroom Salt * Wild Morel Mushroom Salt

For more info on Seedy Sunday details and Alex's workshop on growing your own mushrooms, see our event page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/183266485491345/