Saturday, December 12, 2009

Candy post #1--non-TJOC recipes and a PSA for dog owners

So, several years ago I decided to make cookies for a bunch of my friends. I made dozens and dozens of cookies and sent them all over the country. I was so insane about this that I made cookies and sent them out days before having a rib removed and moving to Colorado at the end of 2006.

But I hate baking in Colorado because of the altitude, so I didn't send any cookies out in 2007 or 2008.

This year I started getting passive-aggressive comments from my friends about the lack of cookies, which were both hilarious and annoying. I didn't want to do the cookies again but I realized that I had a new love that I could make instead...candy!

Candy is actually better in Colorado than the midwest because of the low humidity. I thought they would take approximately the same amount of time as the cookies. That was incredibly wrong. They took me at least ten times as much time.

I made many types of candy, half from TJOC and half from other cookbooks. I went to Barnes and Noble and perused their candy-making section. It was four books. Only four books. I bought two of them. I actually bought fifty percent of their candy section. Not even half the titles--half of the books!

The first book I bought was The Field Guide to Candy. I was excited about this book! It was cute and colorful and had information on approximately every candy ever made! I decide to make several candies out of it! I started by making gumdrops.

This is what I ended up with:



That is not a gumdrop, even if you cut it. And it didn't even taste good. I threw it away. I figured it was my fault and made peppermints. An even bigger disaster that almost ruined my saucepan (I didn't even take a picture). DON'T BUY THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU JUST WANT TO LOOK AT THE PICTURES! I had been really excited about making cherry cordials for my father--I had the cherries soaking in kirsch and everything--and I decided not to try because I was not optimistic that they would turn out.

I had much, much better luck with Brittles, Barks, and Bonbons by Charity Ferreira. I made three recipes from it. I'm not going to do a step-by-step because these aren't TJOC recipes :)

Butter mints! I didn't know these little mints were called butter mints but I always take a handful when I see them out at a resturant. They were easy to make and delicious. They also don't require any cooking so they would be a good starter candy.



Peppermint bark is something that I've never been a huge fan of, but it's really easy to make. Believe it or not, I couldn't find candy canes at the grocery store. I certainly couldn't believe it. It always seems like there are hundreds of candy canes everywhere and I get dozens of them for holidays--and I don't even like them! It took a special candy cane pilgrimage to Walgreens (which has a wide selection of candy canes).



As I said, I don't like peppermint bark, so I have no idea how it tastes. But a coworker who loves the stuff said it was tasty. And it sure was pretty!

Rocky Road!



Personally, I love rocky road. And s'mores. I like chocolatey combos. This rocky road was just chocolate, marshmallows, and pecans and it was aaammmmaaazzzing. The book taught me a great trick--don't worry about tempering the chocolate, just melt the chocolate so slowly that it never falls out of temper.

I also made macadamia nut brittle. Incredibly good if you like macadamia nuts, although rather expensive to make.




PSA--I call my dog a little roomba because she is constantly eating everything that falls on the floor. I dropped macadamia nuts and didn't think anything of it. About ten hours later, I went upstairs to go to bed and called Duchess. She didn't follow me. I kept calling her and looked down the stairs and she was staggering up. I went to get her and her back legs weren't working--they were paralyzed. I immediately figured that she had probably eaten something she shouldn't have and I googled and found out that MACADAMIA NUTS ARE TOXIC FOR DOGS. I called the ER and they said that it should pass in 24 hours, just watch her. She was better in 24 hours but it was terrifying--it actually paralyzed her back legs but the poor dog still was wagging her tail :(


Finally, out of my 1964 TJOC, I made Maple caramels:



First off, the recipe was written in (apparently) 60's lingo. I was supposed to cook the candy over a "quick heat" and then cook the ingredients "slowly". Very vague. It took about an hour to get up to temperature. When I popped them out and cut them, they were extremely fragile and granular--I was sure they were wrong. I gave one to my father (who, unfortunately for him, is on the Atkin's diet and couldn't eat any of the candy) and he told me they were perfect--it was an old-fashioned candy and that was exactly what they were supposed to taste like. I found them extremely addictive--they only had four ingredients--maple syrup (spelled sirup, strangely, and the real stuff--very expensive at Whole Foods), brown sugar, cream, and butter.

The table got incredibly full--and this wasn't even all the candy!



Hooray for candy-making!

Add to <span class=Technorati Favorites">

4 comments:

  1. oh yeah, macadamia nuts are definitely toxic to pooches. mocha is the same way, a little roomba, but i always have to be careful when i'm working with mac nuts. one time, mocha ate an entire onion off the edge of the counter once..it wasn't pretty - since then she won't take things off the counter, but if it falls on the floor it's every woman for herself :)

    Your brittle looks to-die-for...YUM!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Peppermint bark in particular was AMAZING! Whoever came up with that idea is a GENIUS. I'm not a huge candy cane fan either, but the combination was really tasty! Thank you so much for it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. i love your blog!
    and one of my resolutions is to make more candy, which you seem to do really well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I loved the Peppermint Bark too! Also not usually a candy cane fan. The Rocky road, also awesome and was enjoyed by my MIL too. <3 butter mints as well.

    I had never heard about macadamia nuts being bad for dogs! How scarly, thanks for the tip though! Aejaz is also a little floor cleaner.

    ReplyDelete

I love comments! Please let me know what you think!

I'm really sorry, I hate comment moderation, but I've been getting annoying Japanese spam messages lately so...comment moderation has started.