The Thursday before Halloween is my absolute favorite CTIAT. Not just because Halloween is one of my favorite holidays but it also a day where I get to make several things and make really fun things.
I collect the recipes for the Halloween CTIAT all year long.
It being close to Halloween I make candies instead of cookies. I’ve done all kinds: sea foam, sour patch kids, popcorn balls, red hots, meringues, and many more. One year I even made teeny tiny cauldrons filled with green frosting as “water” and candied non-pareils as the bubbles. I even broke my own rule of no brownies in making the cauldrons. I think that was one of my favorite Halloween CTIAT make of all time. And the buttercream was pretty good too.
I thought I had a pretty good crop of candies this year. I was going to make candied sour apple bites, Texas fudge, mini Payday bars, and candy corn fudge.
I was reviewing the recipes on this past Monday and I noticed that the candied sour apple bites needed apple cheong. This is not a three day process and I didn’t realize that was the case, even the second time I watched the video. The process of making cheong is adding the amount of fruit that you are using with equal weight in sugar in a sterile glass jar and let the magic of osmosis work where the sugar draws out all the moisture out of the fruit and you are left, after several days, with syrup and the fruit. The syrup can be used for a lot of different things. And the fruit can be used in different ways. Such as the sour apple bites I was going to make. This process takes the better part of a month. This means no candied sour apple bites this Thursday.
I have had a bad run of making chocolate things as well. I scrapped an entire batch of something because the chocolate would not set. This meant that I didn’t feel confident in the mini Payday bars so I struck them from the menu.
However, I needed a third candy. Then I saw a chef microwave marshmallows. The marshmallow is placed on a plate and is microwaved for 45 seconds. It puffs up a lot and then shrinks. As it cools, the marshmallow becomes brittle. If the microwave does its job the marshmallow caramelizes well. I did this several years ago with Peeps chicks which was a lot of fun. The marshmallow becomes caramelly and toothsome is the best way I can describe it. To me the marshmallow’s texture has been changed and it is both soft and firm to the teeth at the same time.
Try it and get back to me.
The candy corn fudge was a good way of using the rest of the candy corn I made into cookies in the beginning of the month. It is supposed to mimic the butterfinger and it absolutely does that. Except the recipe I used wasn’t as flaky as a butterfinger but absolutely it smelled the same.
The third “candy” that I’ve been waiting to make all year is the Texas fudge. I had only seen a picture of the make, with the jalapeño topper but I wanted to make it. The recipe calls for 2 types of cheese, evaporated milk, a small can of diced green chiles, 2 eggs, 1/2 c flour and seasonings and topped with jalapeños. It is baked until it is browned at the edges and set.
The next time I make this, I will use less evaporated milk because the make was a bit soggy when I was cutting it.
When I arrived with my boxes and boxes to the OR lounge, two people immediately asked me what I brought. I explained to them the different “candies”.
Immediately someone tried the Texas fudge and asked for the recipe.
I put out little cards explaining the three candies and the add ons. I brought the rest of the package of frosted chocolate dinosaur cookies from two weeks ago and also naked marshmallows that hadn’t been microwaved yet. That card explained how to microwave them to make the marshmallow bones.
When I was walking back to the lounge after telling the department desks that the Halloween CTIAT had been set out, someone stopped me and asked me for the recipe of the Texas fudge. It just happened to be the person I got the jalapeños from.
I would consider that a success.
