Almond and Chocolate Clusters

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While I read other reviews, I wanted to try it anyway. There isn't one step to this recipe that works. I threw out 2 bags of expensive chocolate, bittersweet and white after it turned to cement, in addition to the "clusters" and cream. Someone take this recipe off the net - it's a recipe for how to throw your money, time and food in the trash.

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I had some of the same problems with this recipe.. Dark Chocolate not melting to coat the candie well, getting the caramel out of the container..
I think the solution with the dark chocolate is better chocolate.. I used Toll House Chips for the dark & white.. the white works great, dark is terrible.. I think these were not ment to be used this way.. Use better chocolate, that's my two cents..
also getting the caramel out of the container.. the freezer did the trick for me, about 5Mins no more no less.. other than that these tasted great.. !

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I like Giada's recipes and usually can get them done really well, but this was an exception. Tough to work with the caramel- mine certainly didn't just "pop" out of the muffin tin like hers did! The outcome is SO odd. Like someone else said- a combination of gooey and crunchy- but overly so. Bummer!

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This is the worst recipe I have ever tried -- 3 attempts! There's no way on this planet that Giada made this work without major pre-show assistance. NO WAY! I've made other dishes by her and they were fine. This is a major flop.

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Nothing really works in this recipe. Much better to melt caramel in double boiler. Place nuts in tins, spoon melted carmel over top. Refrig. They come out easily and then spoon melted chocolate over. No way this worked for Giada without a bunch of back stage work. Pretty sneaky. I'll really think twice before I use any of her recipes again.

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I didn't have problems with my chocolate seizing as I added the cream with the chocolate and warmed them together. HOWEVER, even though I watched them carefully, the caramels went from whole pieces to crunchy in the time it took me to get out the baking sheet and parchment. I still tried to complete the recipe, but the chocolate never set up past the gooey stage and the clusters themselves were an unpleasant combination of really sticky and overly crunchy (in the same piece. I tried them out on a friend who will eat anything - he tossed it out. Swing and a miss - I'm going back to the traditional way of making turtles. Giada made it look SO easy...not!

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Not recommended. The candies broke when I tried popping them out of the muffin tins.

Not as good as it looked on tv.

Sorry.

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This looks like a good recipe, but turns out horribly! I own a bakery so I know how to bake and make sweets but this is just a recipe for disaster. Even though I heavily greased my cupcake tins, the caramel still got stuck everywhere. I spent 3 hours trying to get it off. Food Network should reimburse anyone who attempts to make these and ends up ruining they're bakeware!

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I wish I would have taken the advice of the other reviewers who thought this was a terrible recipe. This recipe took 3 hours because of all the problems I encountered and the modifications I had to make. Unwrapping caramel candies and cutting them in fourths is a ridiculous waste of time when there are much better ways to get better results. Since I greased the tins very well and put them in the freezer instead of the refrigerator, they weren't too difficult to get out of the pan. The problem was that they didn't have nearly enough caramel to hold them together. Many of them broke apart into pieces before I could dip them in the chocolate. For subsequent batches, I tried putting caramel both below and above the nuts. That method did not help much. Adding cream to the white and the bittersweet chocolate actually created a dough-like consistency and I had to throw it out. The cream was at room temperature as the recipe suggested. I served the clusters that I was able to salvage and my guests seemed to enjoy the taste. I have learned that Giada's recipes are undependable even for an experienced home baker like me. So many modifications need to be made that I might as well create my own version of the recipe and save myself the hassle.

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I think it was the humidity, the melted chocolate congealed kind of strangely into a frosting consistency (even with the cream. I made these for a company thing, but they didn't come out very pretty. My husband had no problems with me keeping them at home though, he thought they tasted like a Heath bar and plowed his way through half of them.

Regarding the sticking issue, I used a very good quality nonstick pan, popped them in the freezer (like one review suggested rather than putting them in the fridge to cool, and they came out of the pan easily.

I'll def try this one again...