Sweet inspiration in homemade candy

Vermont author Gesine Bullock-Prado finds pleasure, patience in baking from scratch

October 26, 2011|By Lisa Zwirn, Globe Correspondent

Gesine Bullock-Prado, author of the cookbook Sugar Baby, makes Florentines,… (PHOTOS BY MATTHEW CAVANAUGH…)

HARTFORD, Vt.- The bubbling brew in the saucepan puckers and steams like lava. When the golden mixture reaches 253 degrees, Gesine Bullock-Prado takes the pot from the stove and pours the liquid into molds. A few minutes later, she sprinkles the tops with flaky sea salt. Behold fleur de sel caramels, boasting an irresistible chewy-soft texture and bewitching salty-sweet taste.

Bullock-Prado’s recently released cookbook “Sugar Baby’’ provides plenty of inspiration for homemade Halloween confections. With an affable and naturally funny style, she holds your hand as you turn out taffy, fudge, toffee, and nut brittle, and confections such as chocolate mousse, creme caramel, pumpkin eclairs, and frosted layer cakes.

The book is organized by the various sugar stages, from thread and soft-ball to hard-ball and hard-crack, with a final chapter of mouth-watering desserts. “I wanted to write the book I couldn’t find when I was teaching myself,’’ she says. Two more cookbooks are in the works: “Pie It Forward’’ (April 2012) and one on cakes. “I love things that take patience and have that extra magical quotient,’’ she says.

Before “Sugar Baby,’’ Bullock-Prado (whose first name is pronounced geh-SEE-neh and who is the sister of actress Sandra Bullock), 41, penned a memoir called “Confections of a Closet Master Baker’’ (later renamed “My Life From Scratch’’). It details a childhood marked by an unrelenting sweet tooth despite the efforts of her health-conscious, German opera singer mother; an unsatisfying fast-paced life in Hollywood running her sister’s movie production company; and finally, moving to Vermont, where she and her husband, Raymond Prado, opened a pastry shop, Gesine Confectionary, in Montpelier in 2004. Prado, an illustrator and movie director, went to Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

The couple closed the bakery four years later in order to gain more control over their lives, she says. Bullock-Prado now writes, teaches, and maintains a blog and online baking forum (on Facebook: Bake It Like You Mean It). She sells her macaroons online (www.gesine.com) and at F.H. Gillingham & Sons general store in Woodstock, Vt.