Mike has had a bag of cacoa nibs in the freezer for as long as I can remember. From before we got married even. Since we're moving again (relatively) soon, I wanted to get rid of them. But I didn't want to throw them away, because cacoa nibs are awesome and why waste them? But I didn't know what to do with them, because I've only ever eaten them in a chocolate bar and I wasn't feeling ambitious enough to make truffles.

I was talking to May not too long ago about truffles (she called me asking if she should use heavy whipping cream or just whipping cream, or something like that). So I tried to pawn off the nibs on her, but she had apparently already bought her own bag. I don't know if she bought them for her truffles or for something else. Seriously, who buys a bag of cacao nibs? *cough*crazyhusband*cough*crazysister*cough*

By the way, for those who don't know, cacao nibs are bits of the cacao bean after they're roasted but before they're made into chocolate. They smell like chocolate and they have a nutty flavor and texture, but they are not at all sweet, in fact they are slightly bitter.

Anyway, after a little web surfing it looked like the easiest thing to do would be candied cacao nibs.

I found this recipe for candied cacoa nibs and cross-referenced it with this other similar recipe because I was confused about melting sugar as opposed to dissolving it (pictures for you at the end if you're also worried about this, but it turns out fine).

Since the point of the exercise was to use up the cacoa nibs I centered everything around that. I had roughly 1+1/3 cups of cacoa nibs, which is the most awkward amount ever. It would mean I had to do a 16/9th of the first recipe link. So I just decided to roughly double everything but make sure to have slightly less. Yeah, I'm not a precise cook, sorry.

All pictures at bottom for ease of referencing the recipe in the future.

Ingredients:
~ 4/3 c cacao nibs
~ 1 c sugar
~ 2 tbs unsalted butter
salt (optional)

Put sugar in a medium pot on medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to melt. In the mean time, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. For my pot/stove/amount of sugar it took around 10 minutes for me to start to see any melting/clumping. The sugar starts to get slightly toasted looking and clumps up, and I just stirred and broke up the chunks as best I could. About 15 minutes in, the whole thing was caramel coloured and mostly liquid.

Pour in the cacao nibs and stir to coat the nibs in sugar. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 5 more minutes. (Even though I doubled the recipe, I had no idea what the "cooking" would do, so I didn't extend the cook time.)
At this point it's pretty much a gooey solid mass and I was thinking "uh oh" regarding cleaning everything up afterward. But this was also the time for your first taste test/snacking privilege, and it was delicious so I decided it was going to be worth it. =9

Add butter, remove from heat, and mix. The butter really amazingly breaks up the mixture pretty easily. Just smoosh it and mix it around with your spoon. Everything just crumbled for me magically.

Pour onto cooking sheet and spread out as well as you can. Sprinkle salt on it if you like (I sprinkled salt on half then tasted, and it was pretty good either way).

I think they taste even nuttier afterwards. Maybe that's a beurre noisette effect too. They taste a bit like crunchy oatmal chocolate crisps? They used to sell something like that at Costco...

Oh, by the way this recipe slightly discolours your wooden spoon. But it also turns your wooden spoon temporarily into a lollipop. And the rest of the sugar that you can't eat off easily will come off if you just soak it in water for a few minutes.

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Bowl of cacao nibs:


Sugar starting to look toasty:


Sugar almost done melting:


Poured in the nibs:


Mm butter:


Done! (In case you're thinking 4/3 c of cacao nibs didn't make much, I actually had two baking sheets, but only one is pictured.)


Nom nom (this box is to take home if I don't eat them all before then):

So if you decided to make vanilla ice cream the way I did, then you were probably left with three egg whites that you didn't know what to do with. The good news is that egg whites can be frozen and then thawed to use later. I just poured mine in a ziplock bag and wedged in between some other things so it would stay upright. Remember to label the bag with how many egg whites are in there so you don't forget.

There are quite a few things you can make with egg whites. I wanted to make some sort of sweet or dessert, which doesn't narrow it down terribly. And then I was restricted by the ingredients I had on hand, which did narrow it down quite a bit.

In the end, I decided to just make a white cake.
I referenced this recipe page, which also has a nice recipe for buttercream, which I haven't tried but sounds legit after a brief conversation with Diana Link (Inadomi?) the other day.
The best part about the recipe on that page is that it calls for 6 egg whites and makes two 9" rounds so. If you're not doing a fancy layered cake, then you can halve the recipe perfectly and make one 9" round instead.

The cake did turn out quite egg-y in the end. Not like EGG but it did call to mind the fact that cake in Chinese is 蛋糕.

Ingredients:
3/8 c butter (if you have those convenient baking rectangles, it's 3/4 of one of the sticks)
1/2 c milk
3 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla (yeah, I didn't have almond extract)
>1 c flour (I'm lazy...)
<1 c sugar (...and not very precise)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Take the butter out of the fridge, put it in a bowl and cut it into smaller chunks.
Flour your round cake pan.

In a medium bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
In a different bowl, mix milk, egg whites, and vanilla.
If your butter is softened, add it to your dry mixture and incorporate as best you can. (If it's not, feel free to microwave.)
In the recipe, it said to add all but 1/2 c of the liquid mixture to the dry+butter mixture, so I tried to add half in first? But it ended up being just odd. So, I recommend just adding all the liquid mixture into your medium bowl slowly while stirring.

Bake for 30 minutes, and you're done.
Frosting would probably be a good idea.

Edit: I don't know if it's the all-purpose flour instead of cake flour, but the cake is on the dense side. Reminds me a little of pound cake.
&& It literally looks like a cake you would make from a mix which is why I didn't bother taking a picture.