Candy Continued

Whew! It's been a heckuva day. You know those little stars I posted earlier? In the molds?

Remember also what I said about soap, cleaning, keeping food and soap separate?

Thankfully, I taste tested one of those stars before using them in any capacity. When you are a soaper in the kitchen, you learn to do this quite often.

Well, I had thought that I hadn't used that mold for soap. Oh boy. Was I ever wrong. BLECH!! Oh, horrible little star! Why did you have to look so delicious?

As I pawed through my cupboards, I realised I also didn't have a nifty candy mold. Huh. Thought I did. Maybe I lent it out. Either way, I lined up my little cast of characters, all in a row - yummy middles waiting to be enrobed in chocolate:



We have salted caramel, chocolate cinnamon marzipan, anise marzipan, and peppermint marzipan. That's about all the dickens I felt getting up to for today.

Anyway, as I said, I didn't have a candy mold. Curious. So I decided to take a trip down to the nearest JoAnn and see what I could find.

I found nothing. They had some seasonal molds and cookie cutters, but nothing I wanted. So I picked up various craft supplies for starting on holiday gift-making, and went next door to the drugstore, since I needed some stuff there anyway.

And of course they had nothing. So I drove back up the hill to Fred Meyer - I've seen some Wilton stuff there.

NOTHING! They had nothing I needed! They had a couple Wilton molds, but they were far too big for chocolates. They had Easter cookie cutters. Sigh. But they had a few other things I needed for making a Christmas gift or two, so I gathered those up, and decided to buy a mini-muffin pan while I was there. I had an idea.

Also, I've always wanted to use these:




I wash my new pan, then line it.





So cute! I then melt a little milk chocolate and drip a bit into the bottoms of the cups - not even a quarter full. Then I drop a little ball of marzipan into each one.



I put a star shaped cookie cutter - new out of the box! Never used for soap! - onto some waxed paper and fill it with the leftover milk chocolate, just because. Mmm. Milky star.




Then, because I am reckless and have no refined tastes, I melt some of my 60% cocoa chips and cover the marzipan sitting in milk chocolate. I do it because gosh darn it, it feels good and I like chocolate!




I melt more milk chocolate, then drop a sticky sphere of caramel into it. I then cover that in more milk chocolate. I then stick the whole tray into the freezer for about five minutes - that caramel in particular just starts drooling away if I don't keep it cold.

Here is one of the two-toned candies:





Looks promising. CHOMP!





Not bad! Not the greatest, but not too darn bad! (Hey, that's what I'm all about, folks, unrefined, crude honesty. I'm a soaper, not a gourmand!) Now, what about that caramel stuff?





Oh, dear. Well, I don't about you, but I think this looks promising. CHOMP!





Oh, my. It is heaven in a mini-muffin cup. The caramel just drips out like a Caramilk bar. Oh! That's it! It's a caramilk cup! Except it's salty caramel. Who cares?! It's great!

So there you have it. Go forth and make your own good but not great candy! As long as you're having fun, it hardly matters.

CHOMP!