Hi, Ive been asked my the Icelandic Freemasonry to make a special confection for their gala evening.

Ive been thinking about this, and I decided to go with a pyramid shaped praline mold. As the Pyramid is a symbol in freemasonry.

But here comes the headache. Filling.

Im all about connecting things, and i was thinking going some sort of aztec/mayan way, delicate spice, cardamon and orange ganache.

Then I though, what could I make to connect the praline more to egypt, does any one have ideas about Egyptian flavoring and spices.

Thanks

Hilmir.

updated by @hilmir-kolbeins: 04/16/15 08:49:44

Cardamon and orange (blossoms) are rather Egyptian. Well, maybe arabic in general.

Or safron. Or cumin (suprisingly great with chocolate). Or kind of Ras el hanout - a mixture of hot and fragrant spices including cardamon, chili, cloves etc. Marzipan is also arabic enough... Roses - as well!

I like the cardamom and orange, I might have to play around with this. Thanks .

Awe man I just had a huge post in here and I went to add something to it and accidently deleted it!!! Did you get a chance to read it? If not, I will retype the short and sweet version:

I was wondering if you had already started the pyramid work, because the pyramid is not actually a symbol in freemasonry. I have been a mason for a while and am very involved in masonic work, and we dont use the pyramid in any of our stuff. This is just a myth (usually created by some crazy conspiracy site) that has been hyped up by all these TV specials about masons.

We do, however, have a LOT of other symbols that we use and I would love to send you pictures of the most prominent ones to see if you could use one.

Also, your mayan style treats sound amazing!!! your making my mouth water!

Thanks for the reply, you are right, after closer examining its a triangle, what has made this confusing is the dollar bill that has a pyramid.

The great seal with the pyramid on it was not designed by masons. There was one mason on the committee of 14 (Franklin), but he didnt have much influence on the final design, just the first rejected designs.

There are a few lodges in the country that have tried to use this symbol for their lodge logo and what not, but that is very far and few between and is only recent. The dollar bill was designed LONG before these few lodges decided to use it. Also, there are millions of masons around the world, but I bet that you wont find any lodges in other countries using that symbol, because its a symbol specifically designed by the united states, so freemasons in other countries wouldnt adopt that symbol.

The pyramid on the dollar has 13 steps, to represent the 13 original american colonies, and the top was not finished because the country was still supposed to grow (which it has since, quite a bit lol) and the eye is to mean God's watching over the american people. the numbers at the bottom equal 1776, when our country was "born" and thats it. The pyramids have been admired by pretty much every nation of the world since they were built due to their strength and durability, and they will continue to be symbols for many cultures to come.

However!!!... all things are always open to speculation (:

So they were saying that the country (which had 13 colonies at the beginning) was built as strong as the pyramids which seem to last forever, and that america would last forever, and still grow to the top, under God's supervision (the eye on top).

I just did an orange cardamom ganache over the weekend and loved it...I am nuts over cardamom lately. There is a cake I make that actually has the seeds from green cardamom pods in it- lovely pop of flavor when you bite into one. I didn't opt for that in the ganache this weekend but I wish I had. Will definitely try this next time. Good luck! I am sure whatever you make will be wonderful.

Made a small batch of ganache today. I found an organic tea that uses Egyptian spices, I opened two bag and infused the cream with it. Then I strained the spices away mixing the cream with milk and dark chocolate adding some orange bark and a hint of cayenne. Its very promising I must say.

That sounds really wonderful. Yum!!!

Thats a really great idea. Sounds delicious!