Holiday Goodies

If You Love Buckeyes, but Don't Like to Make Them... BCatherine



I found this recipe a while back in one of those little (pillsbury, I think) cookbooks that they sell at the checkout stands. It takes just like buckeyes, but w/o all that work!

1 pkg. (18 oz) refrigerator chocolate chip cookie dough (the rolled kind that you slice)
1 1/2 cups peanut butter (we like the regular Jif in this)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla (I use 2 tsp.)

Cut the cookie dough in half. In the bottom of square dish, spread out the cookie dough so that it covers the bottom of the dish. Mix together pnut butter, sugar and vanilla. Put over cookie dough. Use the other half of the cookie dough to cover the top of the peanut butter mixture. Cook for 30-35 min. or until golden brown and firm to the touch. 350 degrees

I cut parchment paper to fit the square dish but hang over the sides (two long sheets that will hang over all four sides). This way you can pick it up by the parchment paper and take it out of the dish. This makes it so much easier to slice. Also, it helps to wait for them to cook to slice them. (I got the parchment paper idea from Alton Brown and I use it for brownies too...works great).

DeardaughterofEve's Basic Toffee

DeardaughterofEve's basic toffee


I want to make REAL ENglish toffee with cream in the ingredients:




"I don't want to be redundant, but those recipes are strange. Toffee has not to be so complicated and precise. Toffee is essentially amorphous sugar with cream. Thus, what we do is to melt sugar, add cream and prevent the sugar from crystallizing by using butter. This is why you cannot make fat-free toffee. Use only cream and sugar, and you will get something of the same colour, but crystalline in form.

Here are what you need for the most basic form of toffee imaginable:

Half a litre of sugar
3-5 dl of cream
About 100 g, or two 50-gram-marks, of real butter
A spatula (wooden)
A clean saucepan
Brown paper


Remember mix all the time, or the sugar will stick to the bottom. You have to have a wooden spatula, because you can crush lumps of sugar with it. Sugar sticks to metal - and don't even think of a rubber spatula!
Heat the kettle up with full power.
If the spatula is made of wood, wet it under the tap with cold water before touching any molten sugar with it. Sugar will stick to dry wood.
Add the sugar in slowly. If you put all the sugar in quickly, lumps will form. Crush them if they appear.
Decrease the heating power to half when almost all has been melted. Notice how the color of the sugar changes to brown. This gives a caramel taste (as opposed to clean white taste).
Pour the cream in slowly. Fierce boiling and bubbling results. If you pour it in too quickly, the cream will cool the mixture down, the boiling stops and crystallization can start.
When the boiling has set on, add the butter. At this point, the mixture is as liquid as cream.
Boil the toffee to remove water, until only a few bubbles form per second. (The point is that you want to boil away water, and when there's no water to remove, it's ready.) The viscosity will change so that the spatula meets the resistance of toffee, not watery sugar-cream. (Some recipes call for placing a drop in cold water and testing if it solidifies, but this is unnecessary.)
Pour the toffee on the brown paper. You have only a few seconds to scrape the remains from the saucepan, because it cools down quickly and hardens rock-hard.
Clean the utensils with hot water.
There are mistakes to specifically avoid:

Keeping it boiling too long.
Using too much cream.
Not mixing.
Setting the heating power any hotter than half of the full. Yes, the boiling might be slow, but when the whole mixture is froth, it will burn.
You do not want to burn it. The nasty, black, foul-smelling, extremely staining burnt toffee will not surrender to even steel wool. Boiling cleaning soda for a long time (hours) can remove the stains. "
Chantell

"But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

For when I am weak then I am STRONG." (IICor.12:7-10)




How about this..
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Half a litre of sugar (1.05 pint, a little over 2 cups)
3-5 dl of cream (10.2-17 oz )
About 100 g, or two 50-gram-marks, of real butter (6.6 Tablespoons )
A spatula (wooden) (wood...a renewable resource. Comes from trees. Those big brown things with leaves. )
A clean saucepan (let's hope so )
Brown paper (I'm just guessing parchment paper would work.. )