We went to Idaho Falls for Thanksgiving. Wonderful trip with Jeanne and Heather and Trevor and the boys and brothers, it was so wonderful! I love family and I miss them. Jeanne (Mom) did such a great job with the turkey and baking and Zon and Heather's rolls were yummy and Jordan deviled eggs were delicious, Heather's green bean casserole and the homemade grape juice made this such a glorious meal!
But I wasn't done there! We helped make pumpkin pie and banana cream pie (which was superior with the real vanilla bean ;) ), apple pie, and Heather made a deep dish cherry pie. Yum dessert!
I wanted to make caramels with Mom, so she got out this amazing recipe book and let me look up the recipe. So simple! Yet, because a storm was coming, we had to leave before we could make the caramels :( But I was so happy she let me take the recipe book home with me!
One of the reasons that is so cool is because this recipe book is from 1944 and Topeka, KS, doesn't get much cooler then that! All the recipes in this book are so cool :)
So I started making the caramels (using 1/2 cup light corn syrup and the rest dark corn syrup), everything was going smoothly and you could almost smell the caramel scent right away. So we got it to boil, and it spilled right over the saucepan! It got on our kitchen rug and all over the stove top, we probable lost 1 cup of caramels because of that lol. So we transferred it to a bigger pan and brought it to boil again and set the time for 1/2 hour.
We decided to eat dinner during that time (since we [Kristin and I] made a delicious chicken pot pie!) After 15 minutes we go back to check on our caramels. Well I notice its smoking!
There's a slight burning smell and Ryan said he saw blue smoke and in a panic we removed it from heat and put our second cup of cream in. Poor, good Joseph had to stir in the cream while it looked and felt like bubbling hot oil and is getting in his arm and hand. I was so worried it would burn and harden right on spot. But it did't!! Luckily we were able to put it back on the heat and get it to 234 degrees (instead of 248, because I was worried it would get to hard) so the we poured it on our well buttered pan, Kristi sprinkled some pecans on and we waited for it to cool. Took almost 45 minutes.
Then we watched a movie, cut the caramels and wrapped them in wax paper, voila! I love them, and I am going to make another batch to give out to more people ad hopefully nothing bad will happen this time. But I'd definitely say, caramel making was a team effort! :D
My Beautiful caramels! What a joy to be had this holiday season. Candy-making with good friends and enjoying the delicious delectables I'd feel guilty making goodies so often if it were any other season. But still, this is about giving! Giving to friends and classmates, enjoy :)
My teacher's birthday was yesterday so I wrapped up a little goody sack with my caramels in it and he was so excited! It makes me happy to put a smile on someone's face. And let's face it, homemade treats always put a smile on my face :)
