My great aunt used to provide TONS of her homemade candy to everyone around every Christmas. This was not a good thing, apart from the comedy potential.
I also remember that one of the bad things about living in the humid south was that all the hard candy in my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s houses would be melted together into a solid lump. Imagine the dissapointment of a child glimpsing the hen-shaped covered candy dish only to find that not only was it crappy ribbon-candy from before WWII, but that you had to break off pieces with whatever blunt instrument was nearby (eg. the “praying hands” statue on the coffee table).
But I still love Pecan Divinity and will get it from the Cracker Barrel if I’m driving by.
Junket was a brand name back then. There may have been other flavors of fudge they provided boxed mixes for. They may have provided other things like puddings and such, I don’t recall.
The web searches I have tried to locate Junket products have failed to get me to the ones I remember.
The dictionary definition of junket appears to be some other substance.
Divinity may be my all-time favorite candy. My aunt made the best I ever tasted and nobody’s has ever come even close to what hers was like. Stuckey’s version is way too chewy and rubbery. I have yet to try the Cracker Barrel version and will try to remember to next time I’m in one.
I have always loved anise flavored candy and will pick up anise squares whenever I run across them
My grandmother was famous for her peanut brittle, but I never acquired a taste for it. I may have been the only one in my family (and even in town) who didn’t share the awe of her brittle. It just wasn’t my type of thing.
My husband-in-law makes some fantastic fudge and I can expect to get some around Christmas, if he’s in a candy-making mood.
At the bottom of the Junketdesserts.com webpage, there’s a dead link to “Hansen Island Fudge”, which when I google, appears to be a microwave chocolate fudge mix which is available from several sources. Presumably, the penuche was another one they used to make. I never knew they made more than rennet-based products.
I think it’s just a grandma thing. If you’re a grandma, you must have at least one tantalizing candy dish filled with old, inedible hard candy. Extra points if it’s welded together in a solid lump like your grandma’s and Hypno-Toad’s. Additional points if you also have dish of foul coffee-flavored “Nips” masquerading as caramels.
Speaking of which, I make caramels. Surprisingly easy and they impress the heck out of people (at least, people who haven’t made caramel).
That said, I do make a mean praline when I go up north for Thanksgiving. That and my chocolate-peppermint fudge are what I do for my dad (he has a serious sweet tooth, shared by most of his kids). Both are surprisingly easy to do, with fairly mundane ingredients. The pralines get pecans fresh off the tree of my sister in Texas.
Give me a heads up if we have a dopefest this fall and I’ll bring some for you.
Ugh. That’s practically a cruel joke to perform on a kid. My great grandma always had that Brachs Ribbon-Candy sitting out. “Always” because it was, of course, the exact same candy year to year. It got to where I could see the damage I’d done in previous years’ attempts to break off a piece.