This is true. If you aren’t near a baking/candy supply shop, Michael’s carries some of these items–but they are a bit pricey. I buy my supplies from Sweet Celebrations (formerly Maid of Scandinavia); their webpage is useless, but ask for the catalog and you’ll have hours of drooly fun to look forward to. They deliver pretty quickly, too.
My grocery store has tons of them, but they’re all red with Santa on them. I’ll head to Michael’s or the cake decorating store tomorrow.
I’ve had excellent sucess finding tin boxes for candy giving at the local dollar stores, for a fraction of what you’d pay at a craft store. Line with wax paper or parchment and voila!
Good tip, Miss Again.
My sister is watching this thread and drooling. She drools anyway.
My mother’s not going to be happy when I go home for Winter break and take over her kitchen to make candy.
Monica, can you use any liquer? I have some Bailey’s that wants to be used. I also have triple sec and a raspberry thing I can use.
I’ve never met a cow pie that looked like this stuff. It looks more like squashed caviar. Tastes much better, though. 
It’s in the fridge stiffening up a bit before I roll it into balls.
Right after I posted that, I rolled the centres into 45 little balls and set them to freeze. Then I made English Toffee (Thank you Hello Again) and monica’s little ganachey things with black raspberry liqueur. I won’t use chocolate chips for the next batch of them because I just don’t like the way they tase. I am going to attempt to make a batch of Bailey’s Irish Cream ganachey things next. Then, candy cane bark. I believe I’ll also make a batch of Almond English Toffee. I’ll likely dip tomorrow.
Well, the Baileys had curdled. I didn’t know it could do that. So, I made a batch of Macadamia Nut ganachey things, a batch of candy cane bark and another batch of Oreo truffley things.
The English Toffee and Oreo truffle look interesting. Can you freeze the truffles, or would they go all weird? I don’t see cream cheese-filled chocolate staying good until Christmas.
I’ve never frozen the Oreo truffles – I think the filling would be fine, but the chocolate coating would be all weird and spotty-looking.
I have, however, chilled them in the fridge for more than two weeks (sealed Tupperware container, of course) and they were fine.
I once made chocolate macaroons for a pitch-in. They were delicious in a better-than-Mounds way, but I ended up taking most of them home. Why? Because they looked like wads of used chewing tobacco. Oy.
Since I’m a giant dumbass (and was rushed), I didn’t cook my almond English Toffee enough and so it didn’t set. I dropped it back into the pot and re-cooked it. It worked, although the extra fat from the almonds needed to be drained off. It’s really, REALLY good, although it tastes a little like Burnt Almond (a chocolate bar in Canada). Which is tasty, IMHO.
We’ve always used either blackberry or raspberry (the recipe calls for raspberry), but I’m sure you could substitute. I think they’d be best with some kind of fruit liqueur, though.
I picked up some non-curdled Bailey’s this evening so I’m going to try a batch of hat tomorrow.
Well, strangely, the cream in the first batch of ganachey things is sort of bleeding out. Bizarre.
What about turtles? What sort of nuts goes in them? I have peanuts, chopped walnuts, and slivered almonds. I have to get to Trader Joe’s for some decent dipping chocolate yet, so I can pick up whatever is needed.
“Nuts goes”. I’m going to have the grammar po-pos after me.
FYI: Baileys is AWESOME in this. I used Ghirardelli semi-sweet chips for it. It’s smooth and wonderful.
The cream might not have been fresh enough if it did that.
I never thought of that as a reason, you could be right. I didn’t check the expiry date, just grabbed the first one off the shelf (my store is anal about removing expired things PDQ).