Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Visions of Sugar Plums

Drove out to Mother’s house this weekend and made Christmas candy! It was fun: my sister Kelly, her daughter Tara, Myself, my friend Anne, and Mother all spent the afternoon together.

We made 3 different kinds: divinity – both with and without nuts, chocolate covered cherries, and some sort of chocolate ball with marshmallows, coconut, and nuts. Mother’s kitchen isn’t the roomiest place in her house, but we managed.

We made the chocolate covered cherries first because before you cover them in chocolate, you have to let the insides dry out a bit. We got all the cherries covered with the inside dough, then set them outside in the cold till we were ready to finish them. Of course, if you set something outside at Mother’s farm, you have to keep an eye on the chickens to make sure they don’t help themselves!

Once that task was finished, we sat down to lunch: Mother made chicken enchiladas with beans and a nice salad.

We then started in on the divinity (my favorite).

The chocolate balls came next, which traded places with the cherries outside so they would have a chance to set before being placed onto paper plates for taking home.

Covering the cherries in chocolate is a lot harder than you would think. You have to move fast because the hot chocolate tends to melt the dough (made of powdered sugar, butter, and sweetened condensed milk) making a big mess. We finally decided that we would just have chocolate topped cherries, since spooning hot chocolate over the balls was a lot easier and faster than trying to dip each one.

By the time we were all done, we each got to take home about 35 cherries, a big pan of divinity, and about 10 chocolate balls. Truthfully that’s way more than I really need, but it was fun none-the-less.

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