Happy Easter!

In this household, Holy Saturday is almost as good as Easter itself:  it's Candy Making Day.  It's a day reserved for making trays of sweets with the help of several good friends.  After five hours of hard work everyone goes home with the fruits of their labors.  Yum!

Rolling centers, making nests and getting ready to cut paves

The gang showed up late morning and we went straight to work.  Everyone focused on a different recipe, working on pave layers, mixing together and rolling the centers for buttercreams, two kinds of truffles and peanut butter balls as I finished cooking up a batch of toffee.  Mmm...

We took a break for lunch, tempered chocolate, and then the dipping began!

This year I was a bit more confident in tempering the chocolate.  We prepared the dark chocolate and milk chocolate at the same time, and melted extra dark chocolate for the ginger chews and the white chocolate for the Oreo truffles soon afterwards.  That allowed almost everyone to be dipping at the same time.  Bowls of melted chocolate were everywhere.  Once we got some centers  dipped, our artist got to work with the fancy decorations.  This year I remembered to allow the centers to warm up a bit before dipping them, so we ended up with less pigtails than we did last year.

It was a lovely spread when we were all done; my table was covered with platefuls of sugary goodness.  We took a few moments to admire our efforts and take photos.  And then... it was like watching Shark Week or a documentary on piranha - everyone dove in, boxing up the chocolates in a wild frenzy (with some taste-testing in between).  I was left with a stack of empty platters and my share of the goodies.  Oh, yes, there was happiness all around.

Candy Crew 2013

A big thank you to all of my candy makers!  I couldn't do this without you.  I'm glad you all participated.  It was a grand day.