Decadence and disaster.....

ran arm in arm yesterday.

Mom, the girls and I had a candy making day yesterday. Lots of yummy, sweet stuff was on the agenda. But it seemed everything we tried had its share of troubles.

Mom was in charge of marachino cherries, mounds bars and buckeyes. I was in charge of cookie dough truffles and pecan turtles. All were things we had done before. The first problem hit when mom realized that she couldn't find her recipes for the mounds bars or buckeyes. I looked up a buckeye recipe on the Internet and she found a new recipe for mounds bars.

Well, the buckeyes were a little on the dry side, but rolled with work. The mounds bars were a total disaster. They hardened to the point you couldn't do anything with them. And as they cooled on the marble "grave marker" mom used for a cooling rack, they became cemented to the marble. Yes, I said grave marker. Mom's parents went to auctions for years and collected some rather unusual stuff. Among them, a marble topped table that upon closer inspection several years ago, we discovered that the top had been made from a grave marker! Nobody let anything go to waste in the old days I guess.

Back to candy. I managed to scrape the stuff up, but there was nothing that could be done to make it usable, so in the trash it went. In the meantime, I discovered that the pecan turtles that I had made had permanently attached themselves to the waxed paper I had put them on to cool. No where in the directions did it say you needed to spray the paper with cooking spray. Minor detail!! They stuck so bad that the only way to get the paper off was to wet it with water. Well, of course chocolate and water don't mix, so the wet candies didn't dip well at all. Another disaster!

The most successful project of the day was the peppermint bark that Suzanna made. It was wonderful and compared to the really expensive stuff from Williams-Sonoma.

Don't feel to bad for us. Between the buckeyes, truffles, dipped cherries and pretzels we still managed to have a huge box of candies that had to weigh about 5 pounds when we were done. I am sure we will enjoy it all. Decadence wins in the end!!!!