Literacy

            I am literate in the art of candy making.  Fourteen years ago, I made a decision that would change my life, well change it a little anyway.  I decided that it was way too expensive to buy Christmas presents for everyone in my large and close nit family.  So I decided to make my gifts to them and I have been making candy gift boxes ever since.

            I began with just buying the cream fillings that go inside bonbons.  They were sold in a tube and I bought candy molds that I coated with chocolate candy melts and then filled them.  After that, I began experimenting with different candy recipes. 

Candy making is a lot easier than most people think it is.  Most of the recipes are a variation of take all the ingredients, put them in a pot and cook to such and such a temperature.  I have made over the past fourteen years caramels, nougats, cream centers, truffles and the chocolate coated cherries with the liquid centers.  As well as assorted nut clusters and other yummy treats.

I have learned that some types of candy are easier than others to make, for instance nut clusters are the simplest to make.  While others are a real pain in the butt to put together and store, the chocolate covered cherries usually leaked through the chocolate coating making a sticky mess that had to be discarded, which is why I stopped making them three years in.  Over the years, I have experimented with different assortments and flavors of candies.

I have become literate in the art of dipping chocolates so that the centers don’t melt in the warm melted chocolate coatings or that the caramels don’t get stuck on the dipping fork and make a mess.  I have found different ways of keeping my melted chocolate coatings at the right temperature.  I started out melting it on the stove, then using a microwave and constantly running back to reheat it.  Next, I used a melting pot and then I settled for melting in the microwave and placing the bowl of melted chocolate coating in another bowl filled with warm water.  This year I used a crock pot with three different crocks and it worked out better than any other way I tried.  This taught me that no matter how long I do a thing I can always learn a new method.

Giving the gift of homemade candy had affected my life.  I spend a lot of time in November thinking of what to make and how to present it to my family.  Do I make edible Chocolate Houses as a box for the candy again or do I just go and buy cardboard boxes and paper cups?  Usually it depends on how much time I have to make my candy.  I have to decide what to make and how much time I have to make it in.  This year I worked a lot of extra hours so I was only able to make a few things but my family, as always, appreciated the effort.  I spend a lot of time planning my gift and then more time executing it.  I began to teach my daughter how to make candy this year and I will probably let her help me more next Christmas.  Candy making is something that I feel that I am literate in but there is always something new to learn about it, I use the candy coatings from the craft store now that do not require tempering so someday I would like to learn to temper chocolate.  I feel literate in the art of candy making but I know enough to know that there is a lot I still need to learn.