By any kitchen science, this recipe should not have worked. Recipes are rather finicky that way.
Especially candy. Which is what I categorize fudgy cocoa no bakes.
The new theme for January 2026 is an oldie. I did this theme in January 2021 and January 2022. Remember those pandemic days from a hospital nurse perspective? Yeah, brutal. We needed all the comfort we could get. So booze was the theme and the general feeling about the hospital.
yay we survived. But did we?
The new theme is going to be booze, hootch or likker, however you think of it.
Alcohol.
I did a red wine syrup in a different type of cookie in 2021 but I wanted to see if it could work in a candy as well.
I started off by making the red wine syrup. Red wine, sugar, application of heat at a low simmer for 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature.
Cool.
Now, I am not a drinker so I don’t know if it was any good but I have more if someone wants to try it.
The genesis of the idea was that I have dark cocoa powder and what is purportedly amazing with dark chocolate? Red wine.
Now that I had the syrup I had to turn my attention to the candy.
As mentioned before, candy is very finicky. A half step in the wrong direction leads to failure. And I anticipated failure and I was mentally reworking my morning to add a stop to a store.
The no bake recipe is simple: sugar, butter, milk, cocoa powder, peanut butter, oats.
In my experience, the simpler recipes do not take to having them messed with.
But, hey, CTIAT is all about experimentation.
I decreased the amount of butter by 3 tbs and decreased the amount of sugar by half a cup. In order to accommodate the syrup. No scientific rhyme or reason here, I just winged it.
I made this recipe when I got home from the hospital at 0430. Why? It is a very quick recipe that takes less than 10 minutes. The rest is drying time for the candies. And I wanted to give the candies their best shot at a good drying time.
In reality, I could have made the candies at 0800. Which is when the White Whiskery Wonder (Dot) wanted me out of bed. There was definitely going to be a nap in my future.
I use a cookie scoop to approximate the candy size when I am ladling it out of the pot onto the cookie sheet. I then place the cookie sheet in the oven to dry. No real reason for that. I just wanted them out of the way.
My morning was moderately busy. I had a hospital meeting at 1200 and my husband leaves for work before that. I ate breakfast, put a load of laundry on, and opened the oven (that doesn’t work) to check on the candies.
Mentally I screamed “This should not have worked!” as I looked at the rows of dried candies.
I put them in the carrying tub and took them to the hospital. I mean, I tried one. Because these should not have worked.
I am not a drinker so I cannot swear that these are a good representative of the red wine infused candy. There is a different mouthfeel to them, a subtle flavor shift. One of my coworkers tried them and sent me a text on my way home. And I quote “omg, the cookies are soo good… love them,”
Okay, so the idea wasn’t so crazy. I wonder if adjusting the butter/sugar ratio is going to work with the Chardonnay Peanut Brittle I have planned.
We’ll find out on Cookie Thursday is a Thing.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 