Christmas was crazy...but the candy!

Our Christmas season is always busy and crowded with activity and sickness, but this year it surpassed itself. We were out of town for nearly half of December, my husband was music director for our church's Christmas music program, He and I missed church a lot because of sickness (both ours and children's), I got in a minor car accident that still put the family van out of condition, and my husband's grandmother (the family matriarch) died on New Year's day. We just got back yesterday from the memorial service. I really crave a calm, even boring, life right now.

I do want to share something good that happened this year. I learned that candy making can be easy. I always had the impression that making candy was a refined art that only meticulous perfectionists who like cooking, chemistry and special equipment can do (that would be my husband). The family Toffee recipe falls into that category. My husband usually makes several batches at Christmas for the rest of the family. That didn't happen this year. But instead, I discovered the wonders of meltables. The candy I made included:

• Milk chocolate truffles with walnuts
• Dark chocolate covered maple candy
• Dark chocolate covered pineapple
• Pretzels dipped in white chocolate with sugar sprinkles
• Chocolate candy done in molds
• Mint candy done in molds
• White chocolate done in molds
• Chocolate covered pecans
  

My conclusions are as follows:

1. Chocolate is actually easy to work with. (at least the meltables which aren't officially chocolate since they don't contain cocoa butter but just the cocoa solids)
2. Molds are very easy to work with if they are shallow, flexible, and clean. The deeper they are the less likely you are to get a nice looking candy since you have to beat it up a bit to get the candy out. This would be a great use for the silicone bakeware stuff.
3. You can candy coat anything with meltable candy.
4. Maple candy does require a candy thermometer and experience to know when to pour it out, but otherwise it is super easy. It's just boiling syrup.

The drawback to this information is that I can now make homemade candy any time I want to. Now I just have to work on my self control.