A Good Old-Fashioned Taffy Pull!

The final products: Strawberry and Watermelon Taffy (With a few molded chocolates thrown in for good measure!)

Before that we had to cut and wrap the taffy.

And before that we had to pull taffy...

and nap...

and pull taffy...

and pull the taffy somemore!

We made taffy at our ladies Titus 2 meeting at church Saturday. We had a great time learning to boil the sugar to the right temp and cool it and color and flavor it and then pull it (twenty minutes of pulling) to the right texture. It was a great activity to bring all ages together.

Our church rents meeting space from a local Christian school and in order to use their commercial kitchen for candy making we needed to have a state certifide food safety person present. My husband happens to be certifide, through Costco, and volunteered not only to attend and be a presence but to help as well. He pulled a lot of taffy for us ladies. He even had blisters on his hands at the end.

The ladies were able to take home baggies of candy to share with the rest of their families to most of the men and boy's delight. The men like the fruits of our "practical homemaking" endevours.

We have these "Far Above Rubies" meetings every one to two months on Saturdays and hit different aspects of homemaking. We have studied gardening, bread making, cheese making, crafting,canning and frugality. We have picked strawberries and made jam, made pumpkin pie from pumpkins- not a can, and much more. Next month we are going to a farmer's market to see what's fresh and local in our area and learn to prepare meals from scratch with that abundance.

This is a good time of skill learning and Bible study. (It's great to learn skills but we also believe that the reason we learn this skills is to glorify God and so we learn his Word at these meetings too.) Woman of all ages are encouraged to come so we can train up our daughters in these skills that our Feministic culture tells us are worthless. If you have questions on how to start one of these groups up at your church, drop me a comment.

Off To Candy Making Class Today

I'm busy gathering supplies for the candy making class I'm teaching today for my church's ladies group. Here's hoping nothing catches on fire! Just kidding! Anyway since I'm crunched for time this morning and morning is usually when I blog, I thought I would post a few pictures from this just past Easter. We celebrate Easter as the glorious ressurection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but the celebration does have its fair share of candy!

Just a sampling from one child's basket.

The family portrait where the BOY isn't doing something silly. (Death threats from Dad do wonders.)

Understand my son's personality?

Think you got that personality yet?

We spent Easter with family friends. Here is a mix of some of both family's kids. Notice the grass and lack of heavy clothing. It was super nice this year as opposed to the Easter we spent with them two years ago where everything was covered in 1/2 a foot of snow.

Oreo/Cream Cheese Truffles

These little treats are easy to whip up and ohhh... so good. The recipe calls for one package (18 ounce) of Oreo cookies (We prefer the Double Stuff), 8 ounces softened cream cheese and 16 ounces semi-sweet or milk chocolate (melted). This makes around 42 truffles, approx. 1 inch each.

Line a baking sheet with wax paper, crush up the cookies, mix 3 cups of the crushed cookies with the cream cheese, roll/shape the mix into balls, dip the balls into the melted chocolate. (You can do this with your hands, a regular fork or a candy dipping fork.) Place the balls onto your sheet, sprinkle with remaining cookie crumbs, refrigerate for one hour and then enjoy!

You can store leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge.

Mixing the cream cheese and Oreo crumbs

My favorite industrial processed food!

Crushing the cookies. We use a cutting board, Ziploc gallon freezer bag and a meat tenderizer mallet. The kids love participating in this step the most.

The finished product.

Melted chocolate... We use the stove top, double boiler method. We prefer this to the microwave as the chocolate doesn't get as hot. Becareful when dipping- the chocolate can burn you. I recommend using a dipping fork.

Current Reading

Slow Cooker Classics (Reader's Digest)- to save time and money and beat the eating out or prepared food habit.

The Bread Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum)- to master the art and eventually make saleable loaves.

Candymaking (Kendrick & Atkinson)- to master the art and eventually make saleable products.

Total Money Make Over (Dave Ramsey)- to GET OUT AND STAY OUT OF DEBT! Whoo... this is a whole other post.

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm off to bake bread and make some heart shaped sugar cookies for my kids to frost and contemplate what lucious dinner to cook the DH. We're sending the kids downstairs early tonight and having a date/movie night. (Watching Fireproof- for the second time.)

Cake Decorating and Various Ramblings

My twelve year-old daughter's cell phone cake

My four year-old daughter's butterfly cake

My ten year-old daughters flip-flop cake
(My eight year-old son didn't have a cake this year as we took him to Red Robin for his birthday.)

I'm off to take the kids to our church's weekly sledding outreach. (We serve hot cocoa and chips to the sledders and hopefully reach someone in need with the gospel.) I didn't have a chance to experiment with any bread yesterday as we were digging our mini-van out of its snow tomb so that we could take it sledding. (We keep our 4 wheel drive in the garage and my DH takes it to work. I wait till it is available to run my errands when possible.) Hopefully this afternoon when I return I will get a chance to experiment some more. I also have been itching to make some candy... chocolate covered nougat, I think.

Kara S. over at Ramblings and Writings (see my favorites) suggested Grandmother Bread from Suzanne McMinn's blog (Chickens in the Road- also on my favorites) as a good bread recipe so I hope to experiment with it soon. In the mean time I'm going to leave you with pictures of this summer and fall's birthday cakes that the girls and I created. (All inspired by Betty Crocker's book- Decorating Cakes and Cupcakes.)

Also if any of my readers has a suggestion as to what food item might go well with hot cocoa (for the sledding outreach) please leave a comment. We would like to serve more than chips. It should be easy to make and very little in the $$ department. Thanks!

More on Candy Making

Can you guess what the pregnant lady is eating for breakfast as she types this? Ha... bet you can't... refried beans with lots of extra cheese and pinapple juice. Scared yet?

Continuing on with info from my new candy making book:

If you let caramels stand for 24 hours before cutting them it will make them less sticky and easier to cut. I can't imagine my family letting candy sit untouched for 24 hours.

Divinity, nougat and marshmellow are all classified as similar candies.

Homemade marshmellow creme is known as "mazetta" or "frappe"

There is a recipe called "Snicks" in the book which resembles a snickers bar. Uhmm... I am so gonna be trying that one! There is also a Mounds candy bar like recipe. I suppose you could add almonds if you are an Almond Joy person.

I have already ordered flip flop shaped lollipop molds to make lollipops for DD2's pool birthday party this June. All that is required for the recipe is corn syrup, water, sugar, flavoring and color. (And lollipop sticks if desired.)

The DH has two and half weeks of vacation coming. Little does he know that pulling taffy is on my agenda.

For those of you with frequent chocolate attacks: there is a great microwave no-fail fudge recipe. 14 ounces of sweet condensed milk, 12 ounces chocolate chips, pinch of salt, teaspoon of vanilla, nuts if desired. Microwave milk, chips and salt for two minutes (on half power), stir in vanilla and nuts, pur into greased pan, refridge until firm.

Tomorrow we'll have a little talk on chocolate, chocolate like substances and perhaps marzipan.

If I have piqued your interest in Candymaking (the book) or candymaking the subject, look for Ruth Kendrick and Pauline Atkinson's book: Candymaking. I found mine at Barnes and Noble and it is available on line as well.

A great source of supplies and ingredients is: http://www.countrykitchensweetart.com/ . They are based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Perfect for us Midwesterners.

Overdone on Monday

Well, apparently, I overdid myself on Monday. I crashed and burned on Tuesday about 3:30pm. I got the basics done but didn't have energy for anything extra. I even had to have the DH bring home dinner. (KFC- yummy, but no great nutritional value.) I spent the rest of the day, parked on the couch, instructing the children on what needed to be done. (I love having kids old enough for a lot of responsibility.) I did start reading Candy Making (Ruth Kendrick, Pauline Atkinson). I like that they recommend using what you already have rather then going out and purchasing a lot of fancy equipment. Though I do want to invest in a really good candy thermometer. I go through the cheap grocery store ones like, well, candy.

They go through basic instructions on how to test your thermometer for any needed altitude adjustments and have a handy altitude conversion chart. They list out basic candy making ingredients and give you some of the "why" these are used.

The best thing I come away with so far is a new understanding of Fondant. I had purchase some premade fondant at a craft store last year to work with cookies. I thought it was awful tasting, and despite the beautiful things you can do with it, I want a good tasting product not just a pretty one. So I wrote off fondant. Well, with these homemade fondant recipes, I might just change my mind. I can't wait to try some out. Both for candy filling and for cookie/cake decoration. They give me 14 different basic fondant recipes, each with many different flavor variations.

The next chapter is on truffles and fudges. I have a fudge recipe that I faithfully use so I don't know if I want to change recipes but we will see. Also, I tried making truffles a couple of years ago and didn't care for the results, so we will see if they can renew my faith in truffle making.

Tips I picked up: Candy temperatures raise as water boils out of the mixture, leaving more candy. (Water doesn't get any hotter past boiling.) The reason to wipe sugar crystals off the side of your pan is because even one crystal can cause a chemical chain reaction in your candy and make it grainy. And lastly, the liquid in a cherry cordial is actually a fondant that is firm when wrapped around the cherry. The cherry juice reacts with the sugars in the fondant to cause it to liquefy days later, after being encased in chocolate. I had always wondered about that!