Weighty Wednesday -- Tis the Season!

Stay strong, my friends!

The rough weight-loss season is still upon us: various parties, social gatherings, extra samples at the grocery story, food in the break room, and all sorts of temptations no matter where you go.

It's hard to resist.

I know.

But I also know that you can survive without that second Polar Bear Poop (recipe in link). One, I'll let you have, but you need to count it as 2 WW points, just saying. Take your time to enjoy the one candy, savor it, draw out the flavor, enjoy the delicate way it excites your senses.

Food will be all around you during the next few weeks, and there is no way to pre-calculate your points for the day. If you have enough will power simply walk away, but it doesn't mean you won't be malleable to suggestion the next day or the next.

And you can't avoid your co-workers forever . . . though you might want to.

So how do you approach the season?

I know I'm not one to talk since I work from home, BUT I do remember the days of sniffing out the goodies in the lab.

And I was good at it.

How would I approach the cornucopia of nummy goodies?

The best defense is a good offense--simply stay away from the goodies!

But as I said that doesn't always happen and it's impractical.

Here are a few tips & tricks:

• drink a glass of water before walking into the gauntlet of goodies
• peruse the table--what is the one thing you only get this time of year? Forget the dry sugar cookies or someone's poor attempt at fudge, or make your own fudge with Mag's Decedent fudge. Only choose items that are rarely eaten. Now is the time to be picky.
• Don't waste your WW points on something that doesn't even look good to you. Yes, if Sally from accounting is pressuring you to try her {insert _____ here} then by all means, take some. REMEMBER you don't have to actually EAT it!
• Eat a protein-laced snack prior to the high-sugar, high-carb, high-fat gathering: an ounce of almonds, or an ounce of cheese, or a hardboiled egg.

The key to surviving this season is not to give up.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill

 

You might stumble once or twice during this season, but never give up, because when you give up you will surely fail.

 

Later, Peeps! 

Foodie Friday -- Reindeer Poop

So I promised you some reindeer poop, didn't I? Well, here you go:

Oh, darn, it's not available any more, guess I'll have to give you a recipe.

Reindeer poop is easy to make, well, actually it's the filling for peanut butter cups. For some reason, when I molded them as peanut butter cups everyone compared them to the gold standard--Reese's Peanut Butter cups. And let's just say they didn't make the grade.

But when I formed them into balls and dipped them into chocolate . . . instant raves!

Humans are so funny.

Reindeer Poop

18 oz. jar of peanut butter (I use creamy Jif)
1 (1/4 pound) stick butter, melted
1 pound powdered sugar

Stir peanut butter and melted butter together. Add powdered sugar in increments and mix by hand until blended--actually, you have to put your back into it and KNEAD the dough. Roll into small balls (1/2-inch diameter or hazelnut size) and dip into chocolate. Set on waxed paper to dry. Trim excess chocolate.

That's it, my friends.  Easy-peasy. Buy some cheap Christmas mugs, make a batch of reindeer poop and polar bear poop, place some of each into mug, wrap with Christmas decorated cello paper, and voila, instant Christmas gift! Well, not instant, but easy.

Hints & Suggestions:

• When mixing the peanut butter and butter together, it gets sloppy. But then again, when you add the powdered sugar, it can become a Winter Wonderland in your kitchen. Jus' sayin'. . . It's not like I've ever done that, right?
• Though I'm a HUGE fan of creamy Jif, it does have a higher than average sugar content than other brands. The problem comes if you need to stiffen the dough a little bit--it makes it very, very sweet. Next time, I make these, I'm going to decrease the butter by a tablespoon or so and see what happens.
• If you have to refrigerate the dough prior to dipping it in chocolate, it can bust through the bottom layer of the chocolate when it warms up. When this happened to me, I added another step of dipping the bottom in chocolate and letting it dry, chocolate facing up, before completing the dipping process. They weren't really round when I finished, but it worked.
• I use Merken's chocolate to dip any of my candy, but you can buy numerous types of candy coat or almond bark at various stores to do the same thing.
• The peanut butter mixture will eventually infuse the peanut butter flavor into your dipping chocolate. You don't want to reuse this chocolate for anything else. Try to use the minimum amount of chocolate you need to dip.
• If you have extra chocolate, it does freeze well. Just warm the chocolate left in your dipping bowl about 15-30 seconds, scrape out of bowl onto a piece of waxed paper. Yes, it looks like a big poo. Let it solidify. Break into pieces and store in small freezer bag until next year. It freezes quite well.

That's all I can think of for now!

Later, Peeps!

Candy Stats

Yesterday evening, I finally finished making candy!! YAY!

Maybe I better qualify that statement: I finished making molded chocolates that will be given away as gifts. Talk about a back-breaking labor of love.

I want to make peanut brittle, pecan brittle and walnut brittle. No, they don't have the same base sugar ingredients. Would you want to eat a pecan brittle with the foamy brown peanut brittle sticky stuff? I wouldn't. The sugar base for the other two brittles needs to be clearer without the addition of baking soda. I thought I'd like to play with a maple extract in the walnut brittle.

And I haven't made polar bear poop or reindeer poop yet. Hm, just noticed I don't have Reindeer poop in my recipes--it's made with a peanut butter filling dipped in chocolate.

If you want any of these recipes, you can click this link: Foodie Friday (or look at Foodie Friday on my blog header), scroll down to candy, and pick the link that interests you. I checked all the links in September so they should work. Please let me know if one is broken.

So what did I actually do for the last two weeks?

I molded roughly 1344 pieces of candy (give or take 30 pieces), made two batches of sea salt caramels, two batches of toffee, two batches of Margaret's Decadent fudge, one batch of Lemon Fudge with shortbread crust, one batch of Aftershock caramels (cinnamon-chipolte).

When you realize most molds hold only 8 slots, I went through the process a mind-numbing amount of times!

Now the time has come for me to figure out how to fit them into their boxes.

Hand dipped chocolates

Hand-dipped chocolates:
Buttery Pecan Toffee (coated in milk chocolate and dusted with ground pecans)
Turtles (singles and doubles)
Sea Salt Caramels (dipped in milk and dark chocolate)
Aftershock Caramels (dipped in milk chocolate with dark chocolate zigzag)

Fudge and caramels

Fudge:
Margaret's Decadent fudge (mistletoe foil)
Lemon fudge with shortbread crust (green foil)
Soft caramels:
Buttery caramel (daisy mold)--good old butter and sugar!
Chambord berry caramel (heart with flower mold)--Chambord and raspberries
Bananas Foster caramel (triangular mold)--Bananas and rum
Grand Marnier caramel (divided square mold)--Grand Marnier and oranges

White chocolate based fillings

White chocolate based fillings (clockwise from the top):
Maple walnut (maple syrup)
Key Lime (limes and Tanqueray gin)
Gingerbread (ginger root and vodka)
Strawberry Margarita (strawberries, lime & tequila)
Peppermint Schnapps (Rumpleminz schnapps)
Chambord (Chambord and raspberries)
Grand Marnier (Grand Marnier and oranges)
Limoncello (limoncello and lemons)
Cranberry Cosmo (cranberries and vodka)
Grapefruit Cuervo (center)

Dark chocolate based fillings

Dark chocolate based fillings (clockwise from the top):
Whiskey toffee (exactly how it sounds :-P)
Buttershots (butterscotch)
Frangelico (hazelnut)
Black Forest (cherry chocolate)
Grand Marnier (orange)
Amaretto (almond)
Barenjager (honey)
Porto (port wine)
Rum Raisin (rum and raisins, of course)
Kahlua (white pyramid in center)

Why did I choose some fillings to be made with white chocolate versus dark chocolate?

Dark chocolate has a very strong flavor on it's own, it would simply overpower the other flavors. The flavors made in dark chocolate enhanced the flavors without overpowering either the chocolate or the flavor. They work together to form an enjoyable combination.

And here you have the final result. One pound of candy that took me HOURS, DAYS and WEEKS to make. Only a select few, okay, 50 people (family, hub's coworkers, teachers, friends), are given my candy, and I suspect only a handful of those people know how much work that goes into making them.

 Later, Peeps!

Now, I have to pack 49 more boxes. Ugh! I'll probably post the chocolate molding tutorial next Monday.

Polar Bear Poop . . . the recipe

I promised Lissa a recipe for Polar Bear Poop.  And I will post it at the end of this blog.  But first I will mention that you DO NOT WANT TO GOOGLE polar bear poop, otherwise you will get this:

--Do not take a sip of coffee!  Oh, heck, why not?  I don't have to clean your monitor--you do! Oops! Was my warning too late?

Okay, that was fun, wasn't it? :-) This was my very first video upload, too!  What a great way to start off the week with a bang!

Anyhoo, back to the topic of this blog. 

Every Christmas, one of my husband's employees makes these cookie/candy concoctions that she calls, Polar Bear Poop.  They are coated in white almond bark with a chocolate melt-in-your-mouth center--DELICIOUS!  But she is very secretive about her recipe.  One day about a month ago, I was trolling through my Farmville gifties (giving and receiving) and a small ad with a picture flashes on the sidebar.

It looked like Polar Bear Poop, but it had some boring name like, "OREO COOKIE BALLS".  Puh-leese!  Couldn't they come up with something better??  Heck, I like Jody's 'Faerie Farts' better than this!

Here's the recipe for . . . POLAR BEAR POOP

1-18 oz. pkg Oreo cookies
1-8 oz. pkg cream cheese--room temperature
White chocolate Almond bark  (@ 4 oz)

Process Oreos in food processor until fine (wet sandy texture). Add cream cheese to crumbs and blend until dough-like.  Chill mixture for 15 minutes.  Roll ball into bite-sized balls.  I use a small melon scoop to get a uniform size and flat bottom.  Chill balls 15 minutes.

Place sheet of waxed paper on counter (I go through TONS of waxed paper when I make candy!). Melt chocolate in microwave (depending on the amount check on it in 30 second intervals).  Using fork, dip balls (roll around until coated), lift on fork and tap off excess chocolate, scrap bottom of fork on edge of bowl, and slide onto waxed paper. 
Poop takes about 30 minutes to dry, so add sprinkles (or Oreo 'dirt') if desired.

A couple of comments here:  I REFUSE TO USE ALMOND BARK (which is made from vegetable fats and NOT cocoa butter).  Yes, I know white chocolate isn't "chocolate" per se, but it must have 20% cocoa butter to be called white chocolate, AND you can taste the difference between good quality white chocolate and 'almond barf  bark'.  The bark has less flavor and more of a waxy texture--BLECH!  

In the baking aisle of any grocery store, you can find white chocolate chips (Ghiradelli or Nestles are both good)--Buy them.  If you're going to make something, then put forth your best effort and make it taste good, too.

That's it for today!

Later, Peeps!