I thought it would be fun this year to try making candy instead of cookies for the holidays.
I have no idea what I was thinking.
Yesterday the schedule called for making caramels. Yes, I have a schedule. The plan is to drop off treats to some friends and for my husband to take a tray in to the office. He had determined that Thursday was the best day for taking in treats.
So the plan was caramels on Tuesday, fudge and english toffee on Wednesday. Pack it up Wednesday night. Deliveries on Thursday.
Sounds so logical.
Then I tried making caramels. I had found several recipes for salted caramels and had been saving them up to try. Already there was a tin of fleur de sel in the cupboard just begging to be used.
I measured carefully and started cooking. The recipe said "cook to the color of a new penny". And yes, I am crazy enough to pull out the change jar and rummage around for the newest looking and shiniest of all the pennies and have it handy for comparisons sake. When the syrup was the requisite color I stirred in the cream mixture and clipped on the thermometer and set out to cook it to perfect caramel goodness.
My, that caramel gets an awful lot darker on its journey to 248 degrees F.
Into the pan. Wait and wait and wait until it's time to score the candy with a sharp knife and sprinkle a few flakes of salt atop each square.
Really, this is dark looking caramel.
More of a bitter, burnt sugar sort of confection. Which is exactly how it tasted. Yuck. Into the trash.
Next batch. Pulled the syrup off when it wasn't as dark as a shiny new penny. Hey, it's looking much more like a regular caramel!
Too bad that batch never set up and was a rather thick sludgy sort of mass. I'm thinking we'll be doing without caramels, but we'll see.
Day two of fun begins with the toffee.
Into the pan went the butter and sugar and seriously, as I looked at it all I could think was I felt better eating this before I knew how wickedly bad it was for me. Over the heat I stirred and stirred and stirred and it bubbled up just like I remember the peanut brittle that my mom used to make doing. I'm feeling pretty good. I'm wondering what crazy person thought to even do this first and had enough money for all this butter and sugar to experiment with.
Uh oh.
Cheese curds. Yep. It looks just like cheese curds. The mixture is curdling and the butter is separating out like a sad, broken sauce.
Seriously, how could I mess up boiling for heaven's sake?
And yet I did. Now my thoughts turned to the great lollipop disaster of '94 and exactly how I am going to get rid of this grainy, sticky, oily mass in my pan.
No toffee for us either. Though I need to figure out what to do with all those chopped nuts.
Candy 2 - Marcella 0
It's not looking good but it would be nice to have some treats to share. I mean, edible and tasty treats. Since I have all the ingredients I might as well go for broke.
Now, I have made fudge before but not like this. This is the old fashioned kind of fudge as opposed to the marshmallow cream kind. I've made the marshmallow cream kind. But, you see, my Fine Cooking magazine came and it had an article on fudge making with step by step pictures. It went into the science behind it and how to avoid grainy fudge and I wanted to try it.
So, after cleaning up the toffee disaster I started measuring ingredients again. Then came the chocolate chopping. Normally, I go to the Scharffen Berger factory and buy obscene amounts of chocolate in nice 1 ounce pieces. However, I only have bittersweet and the recipe calls for unsweetened. So, I purchased a bar of it at the store. Do you know how much it weights? 9.7 ounces. Seriously. Not 16 or 8 or anything even and well, normal. 9.7 What kind of genius decided on that one?
Four ounces of chopped chocolate later it's time to start cooking. I'm getting a bit paranoid. Could we really end up candy-less after all this? I melt, I stir, I put the lid on and in my mania set the timer for exactly 2 minutes just as the recipe directs. Diligently I follow the directions and accompanying pictures.
Now the fudge has to sit for what the recipe says could be as long as an hour and a half for the mixture to cool before I can beat it and pour it into the pan.
I'll let you know if we get any edible candy or not.
Oh, and my husband decided to work at home on Thursday so no treats needed for the office either. Sigh.
This Christmas thing isn't for wimps.
--marcella
I think I remember mom making the same mistake on her toffee experience. The recipe came from Carol down the street and she said that the heat was too low. Mom didn't throw away the toffee grease glob, but just reheated it at a higher temp and it worked.
I'm waiting for you to make the date bars with dates, I have some dates from a granola bar experience and need to do something with these dates in the cupboard!
By the way, your quilt is fantastic!! Lucky past president. I'm off in a couple of hours for my road trip with a girlfriend. Can't wait to come back for Christmas dinner = the potatoes look delish!!
Well, the candy disaster is long gone here and I've moved on to cookies. Maybe I'll get brave another time and try again. Or not!
The potatoes are awesome! Chad will just miss out. Dessert will be awesome too (I hope!)
Hmm...I don't know about the date thing. The cranberry is so good and easy that I don't miss the dates. Oh, don't you have that original Paul Prudhomme cookbook? He has a chocolate chip cookies with dates in it that is awesome. Make those! Make them and share them with me.
I do have that cookbook. I spent hours squeezing lemons and freezing the juice. The tree doesn't look like I've picked any!! Maybe I'll switch to cookies. I'm making split pea soup in the crock pot tomorrow so I don't have to worry about making dinner. When does Mr. B fly back in?