So far this has been the easiest recipe and if you are a peanut butter lover then this your day and recipe. Oh I almost forgot to tell you, for the next 6 days I am doing something different. The first six days I mixed everything by hand - the old-fashioned way. Beginning today, I used the kitchen-aid to mix the recipes. A heck of a lot easier and quicker. Thank goodness for modern conveniences and shout out to whoever spent the time and effort to create the modern mixer.
The recipe........a lot powdered sugar; a little bit of salt; a lot of creamy peanut butter; a little bit of butter....cream together and then roll into balls. Now here again, I have a "beef" with the amount the recipe makes - this recipe indicated that it would make 76 balls; when I finished mine made 34. Now I probably could have stretched the recipe, but after rolling about 20 - the balls started getting bigger and bigger because I just wanted to be done. All balls rolled; placed on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper and into the fridge for 30-60 minutes for the peanut butter to harden. I checked them at 30 minutes - not that they really looked any different from when I put them in their initially, but I really wanted to do the crossword puzzle so I let them chill for another 30 minutes. Crossword puzzle done - time to check on the chilled peanut butter. They still looked the same...only colder. Okay chilled balls and now onto the chocolate.
Another easy step. One bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels and 2 tablespoons of oil - pop into the microwave and check about every 30 seconds. Stir, another 30 seconds, stir until completely melted. Cookie sheets pulled out of the fridge and ready to dip. This is where rolling the balls into "small" balls pays off. You have to poke a toothpick into the balls to dip and roll about in the chocolate - about 3/4 of the ball. Let the excess chocolate drip off and place them back on the parchment paper. So I should have made all the balls kinda, sorta small since when rolling and dipping them into the chocolate they become heavier and have a tendencies to start to pop off the toothpick. I had a couple that popped off the toothpick and became completely covered in chocolate. In an effort to have visually, uniform dessert - I ate those.....well, I couldn't feed them to the dog. Everyone knows that chocolate is lethal to dogs. I would like to say that they tasted bad, but I would be lying.
[Insert a little bit of useless information] The finished candy is suppose to resemble a buckeye which is the state tree of Ohio that produces a nut that is poisonous unless heated and leached. Native Americans gave it the name as it resembled the eye of a buck deer. Okay enough with history lesson. Thank you, Mr. Kohlenbrander and Mr. Crawford for my history lessons in high school.
All balls 3/4 covered in chocolate. Then you have to cover up the toothpick holes. Hhhmmm........really?!?!? Can't hold the candy to press closed the toothpick holes as the chocolate is still wet. So I decided to wet my index finger and smoothed out the hole.....that tip wasn't even in the recipe. That was all Donna!!! Into the fridge for the chocolate to harden about an hour. Arrange them on a plate and take a photo.
A bit of an uneventful day in the kitchen except that until about an hour ago - I realized that I had powder sugar down the front of my jeans. I guess from when I was cleaning up. Not to worry.....I called out for Chinese tonight. I have a couple "advanced" recipes coming up so maybe it was a good thing this recipe went off without any major hitches. Of course, this could just be the lull before the storm. Can't wait for Day 8 - how about you???
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment