So this is what happens when you go through the pantry and you realize that you had a lot of open and half empty bags of things… pecans here, Hershey’s Caramel Kisses there. Sea Salt and bourbon are constants. So, you put them all together and you get these beauties. Delicious with a hint of bourbon and salted caramel. The Kisses melted to add on the pecans halves. Pretty ingenious, I’d say.
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It’s Valentine’s Day. Or, well, it will be soon. As I say every year, I am not really into the whole Hallmark “manufactured” holiday, but it is always a good excuse to make some sweet thing. This yea, I mad these Winter Bliss Chocolates. I just made up the name … there is nothing particularly wintry about them. They do have orange and pistachios, which give them a lovely nuance. They are very very dark chocolate, my favorite. Delicious!
Aaaand here is another stocking stuffer idea: Buckeyes! Yes, just another excuse to make sweets really. And these are sweets with a kick. If you’ve never heard of Eliot’s Adult Nut Butters, you should definitely seek them out. Peanut butter, Almond butter and Sunflower seed butter with a kick — they make honey sriacha, garam marsala and the type I used here, chocolate chili. Very yummy. I added a little bit of additional chili powder and sprinkled on some sea salt to round out the sweet and salty combo. Very yummy!
Every year, right around the holidays, I try my hand at making another variety of chocolate truffles or fudge. Fudge is my old standby though, as I have a great base recipe that I have been using since high school and it is very easy to adapt with some new flavors. This year, I made Winter Spice Fudge, which has a lot of gingerbread and cinnamon flavors and Irish Cream Coffee Fudge, which isn’t very boozy but ended up very yummy. Very easy to make and very foolproof with just a few ingredients.
So, S’Mores. If there is one thing that my non-American friends don’t get (well, besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches… they don’t really get that either!), it’s s’mores. Yes, we toast (or set on fire) marshmallows, and smoosh the softened marshmallow between graham crackers with part of a Hershey bar. And then try to eat that overload of sweetness without making too much of a mess. Yeah, ok, s’mores are a little odd. Maybe I don’t get them either. 🙂 So I made a new and improved mini-cupcake version for the BBQ Party that I attended last weekend: homemade mini-graham crackers, chocolate mini-cupcakes, from-scratch marshmallow cream and the obligatory piece of a Hershey bar. A “civilized” version of the s’more, if I do say so myself!