Halloween Candy! (Homemade Edition)
I know, I know. Its November 1st (or 2nd depending on where you are, or later depending on when you are reading this). Halloween is over and I was too lazy to busy playing Minecraft yesterday to post my adventures in making Halloween candy. So I am posting about it today.
It all started over the summer; I came across a recipe for Homemade Butter Finger Candy and instantly fell in love. Only problem: I’d never made candy from scratch before. I was nervous, knowing that cooking sugar can be slightly difficult. But I decided, “Hey, it can’t be that hard right?”
Part of my motivation was born out of a love of Halloween and candy, but a dislike of the artificial taste of store bought chocolate candies. Seriously, sometimes I feel like store bought bars have more vegetable oils and preservatives in them than actual chocolate. I decided to make all my Halloween candy from scratch this year, which given it was only myself and my boyfriend eating it turned out to be one batch of Homemade Butter Finger candy and one batch of candied orange peel. I won’t go into tons of detail of how I made both like I usually do, mostly because I didn’t get the chance to document the processes all that much.
First up, Homemade Butter Finger Candy. I got my complete recipe from Not Without Salt, a wonderful food blog that I adore. I took zero pictures of the recipe making process because I was terrified that something would go wrong. Luckily, it didn’t! I boiled my water and sugar, using a candy thermometer that barely touched the sugar-water mixture and prayed everything would work out. My candy cooked to the right temperature and consistency, which made me overly excited. After some careful stirring together of warm peanut butter and my melted sugar mixture, I quickly poured my concoction into a buttered pan, added chocolate, and viola, I had butter finger candy! I was so proud. The candy got rave reviews from my family and boyfriend who couldn’t stop eating it. The full recipe is on Not Without Salt, check it out.
Candied orange peel was easier, but more time consuming. I consulted several recipes to make it and wound up improvising my own ingredient amounts. It’s such a simple process, it barely needs a recipe. Basically you get some oranges (I used 3), slice them in half and scrap out the orange flesh away from the peel. Then cut the peel into tiny slices, about 1/4 inch thick.
Put your peel slices into a pot of water and let it come to a boil over the stove. Boil for a few minutes, about 5, then drain your peels. Repeat the boiling and draining process about 2-3 more times to remove the bitterness from the pith on the peel. (You could skip this and just try to remove the white pith from the peel, but that can be challenging and you will be left with thinner pieces of peel)
Once you’ve boiled and drained your peel for the last time, bring equal parts sugar and water to a simmer in a pot/saucepan. I used about 1 1/4 cup of each, but adjust the amounts depending on how much peel you have. Once your sugar water comes to a simmer, add your peel to it and simmer for about 45 minutes or until the peels are tender and translucent.
Mmm, orange peels simmering.
Drain the peels and set them on a cooling rack to dry. (Or if you are like me and don’t have a real cooling rack you can fashion one out of aluminum foil. I accordion folded my aluminum foil and then placed it on a baking sheet so there were hills and valleys of foil. It was sort of lame but it worked)
You can either dip your candied peels into sugar immediately after you’ve drained them from the sugar-water mixture and then let them cool, or let them dry and cool, and dip them in chocolate like I did below.
My fingers were covered in chocolate after I finished; it was great
Well there you have it folks, homemade Halloween candies. I loved the processes so much that I plan to make homemade holiday candies for Christmas and Hanukkah!
Below, butter finger candy in front, candied orange peel in back. Forgive my misshapen butter fingers, they taste better than they look.
