I grew up in a house that was always "cooking". My mother and father owned a catering business which served to bring in needed extra income. I have fond memories of my mother baking French Lace Christmas breads and making the most delicious candy you could taste. It's taken me years to learn how to make the most favorite candy of all...chocolate covered caramel turtles. I've been married for 19 years now and I think this is the first year I've had a near perfect batch. It's a three day process to make turtles. First you must spend a day buying all of the finest ingredients. Heavy whipping cream. Fresh pecans. European chocolate. You can never buy all of the ingredients at the same store so you have to drive all around and all the while your mind gets racing with all of the magnificent candy you will have at your fingertips when it's all over!
Day two you must cook the caramel and pour it gingerly over the pecans that have been placed in three's on a buttered cookie sheet. Cooking caramels takes patience and if you try to cook it too fast you'll end up with hard tack!
Day three you put on a nice warm sweater and cool the kitchen to 60 degrees with NO drafts. You slowly melt the chocolate & make sure you don't heat it too fast or too hot or all will be lost with white streaky messes. Once the chocolate is warm and in a nice big puddle you dip and dip and dip. The hardest part of all is not licking your fingers when they are dripping with the most lucious liquid you have ever seen. Then you cross your fingers while the chocolate tempers and cools for that is when you will know if you have followed all of the directions. For if you did it right the chocolate candies will glisten and shine! After the chocolates are finished I like to put them in old metal film canisters that my mom gave me. These canisters are from my youth and whenever I see one sitting on the cold room shelf in the food storage I just hope that there is a turtle left over from Christmas time. It's one of those tastes that says MERRY CHRISTMAS!
2 comments:
Oh my gosh...you and Valene. I don't think people with attention-def. can make caramel turtles. I tried to make gingerbread caramels this year....hard tack. Tried last year just caramels. Hard tack. Thought I was following the instructions perfectly. But attention def. people CAN EAT turtles. I'm REALLY good at that!
Yum, Janet!! I love Turtles.
Hey, I sent you an e-mail last week? Did you get it? I was looking for Stuart and Monique's address. I seem to have lost track of them.
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