Isolated Candy Making

I was going to trim down the participants for candy making this year, but I hadn't figured on paring it down quite this much!  Just me.  Working solo required a smaller number of recipes.  I picked items that would freeze or would ship well and could be scaled down easily.

The counter was a mess as I melted butter for the toffee, chopped white chocolate for paves and dark chocolate for ginger nut clusters.  Stuff scattered all over as I tried to organize what I wanted to work on first.

Toffee was not scaled down.  But I tried something new.  I poured half the pan with nuts and chocolate chips pressed in (the easy cheating style).  The other half is straight up.  So one half was all done and the other half needed dipping.  I love how the dipped toffee looks and feels - it's just so much work.

I also made the whole batch of ginger nut clusters, even though that would have been easy to pare down.  They're so good.  Next year - add more ginger!

I could not find chow mein noodles anywhere to make straw nests (butterscotch chips, peanuts and chow mein noodles).  Who would have thought they'd be right up there with toilet paper, hand sanitizer and flour?  My sister found refrigerated noodles that she shared with me.  She tried baking hers, I ended up frying mine.  They didn't all crisp up right, so I threw them in the oven for a few minutes.  Not bad.  A little tougher than store bought, but they'll do.

Lastly, I made peanut butter eggs and a tiny batch of paves (dark chocolate on the bottom, white chocolate on top).

Yum.

I eliminated most of the truffle recipes.  No butter creams.  Nothing with cream cheese in the center.  That eliminated most of the dipping, which required less tempered chocolate.  The ginger nut clusters are dipped in untempered dark chocolate - so they were easy.

I had fully intended to temper only one batch of chocolate.  In the end, I wanted to dip the peanut butter balls in milk chocolate and the toffee in dark.  The process wasn't as bad as I remembered (it just takes a long time and I need to be patient).

Not bad.  I dipped the last of the items on Sunday night.  My refrigerator is full of candies that I need to shuffle around and get into the deep freeze. Or eat them.  We could eat them all... it would be so easy....