I’ve made marshmallows the last couple years. They’re a huge hit. And fairly easy to make.
Last year - mint, kahlua, amaretto, cinnamon (with Red-Hots coating), pumpkin, plain.
This year I’m going to try to find some chocolate extract (I used to see it all the time, but couldn’t find it anywhere last year) and do chocolate, mint, almond, plain, and maybe a couple more.
Chow.com has some excellent recipes for chocolate bars like Almond Joys, Peanut butter cups etc. I find that the store bought ones are over sweetened and I worry about the preservatives they use.
They have 4 candy bars the first one is very, very easy. the others are a little harder.
http://www.chow.com/stories/10746?tag=rbxcch.2.a.1
We’re going to try the Peanut butter cups first. I like the idea of adding graham crackers for crunch.
Easiest ones ever: make sandwiches with Ritz crackers and peanut butter, dip into melted chocolate, cool on wax paper, eat by the fistful.
They have a Twix recipe, but I have used this one before, from a friend, that is awesome as well:
Homemade Twix Bars
3 tubes of Ritz crackers
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup sugar
¾ Cup Karo syrup
1 cube margarine (or butter)
1 t. vanilla
2 ½ bags melt and mold chocolate (By Guittard, you can get it at Winco. OR my sister tempers her own milk chocolate, but she’s good at stuff like that)
Combine sweetened condensed milk, sugar, Karo syrup, and margarine in a saucepan. Cook on low until “Soft Ball Stage” (That means that when you drop a bit of it into cold water to cool it down, it will form a soft ball). THEN add the vanilla.
Lay out Ritz crackers on wax paper, salty side up. Spoon approximately 1 teaspoon of caramel onto each cracker and let cool.
Melt chocolate, and dip cookies into chocolate, returning them to wax paper to set up. IF you don’t own a dipping fork, you can use a plastic fork with the center tines broken off to fish out the cookies.
I made them for Christmas a few years ago, and they were a huge hit.
That sounds really good. Do the Ritz get soggy?
I love cream cheese mints:
1 box confectioners sugar
3-oz block of cream cheese
A few drops of mint flavoring
A few drops of food coloring
Knead the sugar and cream cheese into a dough, then add flavoring and color to taste. To shape them, break off a small bit, roll it into a ball, coat it in granulated sugar, and then press it into a flexible mold. Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve.
Awesome. Thanks, guys! I was planning to go to Michaels tomorrow anyway so I’ll give it a look.
My grandma made skillet cookies every holiday. They were the best cookies in the world. Sorta tasted like hard bites of pecan pie. I have never found the right recipe although there are many called “skillet cookies”. Not hers though. She died ten years ago without ever sharing her recipe.
My Trix candy is hugely popular at home and at work. Melt some vanilla or chocolate bark in a large bowl, I used 4 squares. I have a big stainless steel bowl, I place it over a large pan of boiling water to melt the candy. When melted, add 2 cups Trix, 2 cups mini marshmallows, and a cup of dry roasted peanuts. Mix to coat everything then spread on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper. Cool for a bit and enjoy. I have added peanut butter or butterscotch chips in place of some of the vanilla bark for a change. A few years ago I found some maple flavored baking chips and candy I made from that was outstanding.
I have also made it using cashews or almonds in place of peanuts. Used salted nuts, the unsalted variety make the candy kind of bland. Flavored mini marshmallows work too. Don’t use Froot Loops, it turns to mush in the melted candy.
Uncle Phaedrusis an amazing resource for all those forgotten recipes … if he hasn’t been asked about it yet, ask him and he may be able to find it =)
Not a bit! And they taste so cookie-like, it’s hard to believe that they’re crackers. But if you start with fresh, crisp Ritz crackers, they’ll be just as fresh and crisp sealed in the chocolate.
Yes, when I make the one I posted above, everyone kept asking me what the “cookie” part was, nobody believed it was crackers.
Here’s a chocolate toffee nut recipe I’ve tweaked over the past few years:
1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup
3 tablespoons water
1 cup salted nuts - I like a mix of macadamias, cashews, and pecans, but whatever you use, get salted
8 oz dark chocolate, broken into bits, or use dark chocolate chips/chunks
Butter a 9 inch square baking dish, and set aside. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the sugar and corn syrup until smooth. Heat to 290 degrees F (145 degrees C) using a candy thermometer (I don’t do this, but it’s helpful if you don’t often make candy and can’t eyeball the “just before soft ball stage” stage).
When the temperature has been reached, stir in 1 cup of the walnuts, and cook for 3 more minutes, stirring constantly. Pour into the prepared pan, then while toffee is still hot, sprinkle chocolate over the top, and let sit for a minute to melt, then spread over the toffee with a knife. If you like, sprinkle some additional nuts on top. Sometimes, instead of the nuts, I’ll sprinkle a tiny bit of sea salt onto the melted chocolate.
Let cool, then remove from pan, stick it in a gallon-sized ziploc bag, and smash with a hammer. Not too hard, though, or you’ll pulverize it, it breaks pretty easily, but this is more fun and less messy than doing it by hand.
Then hide it so you don’t eat it all before you have a chance to give it away.
Thank you for this. I make a similar toffee every Christmas, and I HATE breaking it up. A time saver for you in return: Just sprinkle the nuts on your pan before pouring out the toffee.
So sorry I missed this post. Last year, we used this recipe with excellent results. We did learn tat freezing the balls before dipping is a crucial step, otherwise they fall off the toothpick into your chocolate. Once the chocolate has set and the balls have come back to close to room temp, remove the toothpicks and fill the hole with a dab of peanut butter mixture, smoothing the exposed top as you go.
This year I’ll be ordering a special pan to melt the chocolate in and, perhaps, some better chocolate.
Coconut Date Balls
1 stick butter or margarine
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup finely chopped dates*
1 cup finely chopped pecans*
1 cup rice krispies
2 cups coconut
*Even if you use chopped dates and pecans, you need to chop them even finer.
Melt margarine in a large skillet over low heat. Stir in sugar, dates, eggs. You want the temperature low so that you don’t wind up with sugary scrambled eggs. (I usually add the sugar and dates first, eggs last.) Once everything is mixed together and starts cooking you can bump up the heat a little to medium-low. Cook and stir until thick, about 15-20 min. Remove from heat.
Stir in rice krispies, pecans, and vanilla. Allow to cool. Roll teaspoons of the mixture into balls and roll in coconut on wax paper. (Use as much coconut as you need - the measure given is approximate.)
These things are a lot of work, between all the chopping (which I do by hand) and the stirring (which seems take forever) and the rolling, but they are soooo worth it.
I made peanut butter cups using a mini-muffin tin one year, and boy, howdy, were they good! So good they were never used as Christmas presents as the family ate most of them up before they could be wrapped. I’ve made chocolate dipped pretzel rods (sprinkled with chopped nuts or whatever) with good results.
Oh, the chocolate dipped Ritz crackers-with-peanut butter sound wonderful, I’m gonna do it! Thanks!
This right here is almost what my grandmother made but she didn’t roll them in coconut. She would dip some in powdered sugar and others in chocolate. I always loved the powdered sugar ones best.
Coincidentally, I went to the superkarket today and they had chocolate-covered Ritz crackers! I’ve never seen them before, has anyone else? They looked good, but I didn’t buy them because I plan to make the ones mentioned above (and they didn’t have peanut butter!)
So with you on that. My mom makes awesome caramels. 