December 18

•=n=•=n=•=n=•=n=•

December 18

We will make buckeyes

today . . . and caramels too!

Who do you want to give them to?

•=n=•=n=•=n=•=n=•

We made a lot of candy today (and, were too busy to snap any photos)! Cayla and I started off with buckeyes. She was in charge of grinding up the graham crackers. She then moved on to manning the mixer, however, the pull of the graham crackers was too strong. She went back to grinding up more graham crackers even though we had plenty. She then proceeded to eat a bowl of graham cracker crumbs while I attempted to coat the peanut butter balls in chocolate. Hats off to the chocolate makers of the world. I have no idea how you create smooth balls of deliciousness without fingerprints or fork holes.

We then moved on to peppermint bark. We tried a new method for crunching up the starlight mints and I'm happy to report that throwing them in the food processor worked perfectly. In years past, Flannery and I attempted to whack them with the bottom of a jar as described in the recipe. Have you ever tried to do this? It was a disaster for us. First of all, it's not so easy to actually break a mint with a jar. And, when you do, more often than not, the pieces go flying across the room. And, if they don't they are either dust or huge. And, they almost always have bits of plastic wrapper smashed into them. And, by the time you get to the last few, the rest of the chunky dust has absorbed moisture from the air and solidified into a large, peppermint hunk. This year was a breeze - I had 3 helpers unwrapping mints and dropping them into the food processor. We pulverized for 10 seconds and voila! [Ok, so it wasn't perfect! I didn't want the peppermints to turn into a blob in the food processor, so I waited until the last minute to call on the starlight mint brigade. I should have waited until the last 5 minutes, because they were still unwrapping as my last bark layer was hardening. Luckily, they are used to me yelling in the kitchen and throwing meaningless tantrums and didn't even bat an eye.

We finished the afternoon with caramels (Green Bittman, last recipe, page 900something). I, um, didn't let the kids near this one:) Collin tried, but I let loose my kitchen fury when he began aggressively stirred the brown bubbling froth. He happily went off to eat a buckeye.

The kids did make a list of everyone they wanted to give candy to. Looks like we'll be making more candy - Cayla listed 15 teachers (and staff) from school, including, "principal". 'Tis the season for giving! Next year I won't suggest that she takes out the yearbook to make her list!