Molecular Gastronomy – Transformation walnut dust biscuits

By Chef Tali Clavijo

so today I felt like making something sweet and powdery. I’m just fascinated by fine powders and what better powder than tapioca maltodextrin? The ability for ‘malto’ to transform oils into powders is like a super power that only heroes are granted access too. Maybe someday I too will be able to turn fat into a fine powder…until then I will be making food that is amazing.

So, for this recipe I needed about 60 g of ‘Malto’ (tapioca maltodextrin), 145 g of walnut oil, 2.3 g of salt, and about 40 g of walnuts (I smoked mine in sugar, but you could use raw walnuts for this too).

I started by pan steaming my walnuts with some sugar for about 10 min on medium. Then I placed them aside.

Pan steaming my walnuts with some sugar

Next, I measured out 60 g of ‘malto’ and added the walnut oil to the mix. I then added the salt to this mix and used a spatula to mix until the mass was even

Adding walnut oil to the 'malto'

Mixing the malto, walnut oil, and salt

Next, I combined the pan steamed walnuts (I did crush the walnuts to make them powdery) to the malto walnut oil and salt mixture.

Chopped walnuts with the malto mixture

I mixed until the mixture was even. Next, I spread the mixture to a thickness of 1 cm.

Spreading mixture to a thickness of 1 cm

this process requires you to get two even leveled surfaces (about 1cm in height). Next, I covered the mixture with parchment paper and used my rolling pin to smooth out the surface of the walnut dust biscuit.

using my rolling pin to even out mixture

Once I rolled it enough I got a beautiful walnut dust biscuit.

Walnut dust biscuit

Next, I cut with a circular pasta cutter

Circular walnut dust biscuit

You could also just use a knife to cut shapes on the biscuit.

Final presentation :

Walnut dust biscuit

Enjoy, and feel free to send me any questions, pictures, or other goodies to molecularfood@gmail.com

Thanks again,

Chef Tali Clavijo