Saturday, January 25, 2014

Still looking in the pantry

Well it's still January so I'm poking around looking for new ways to be frugal and the pantry is my favorite place to make it happen.We will not talk about the yarn and fabric,tucked away in bins. January will be dedicated to "THE PANTRY"
I have a cookie recipe that calls for brittle and strange as it may seem, I can't always find SKOR brittle bars at my grocers.While lamenting my tale of woe to my daughter Sarah, she decided to find a recipe for me and within a very short time I received THIS recipe. I have no problem attempting most recipes but, candy??? This is out of my comfort zone.

The ingredients were simple enough
  2 sticks of butter
1 cup of sugar
5 tablespoons of water
1 teaspoon vanilla
chocolate 
nuts                               I think the secret here is to make this in an iron skillet. She simple says to melt the butter sugar and water till the bubbles start coming up caramel color. So I did ......stirring constantly. Once it started to bubble I watched closely, trying to get just the right color of golden caramel. This took about 10 minutes. I wasn't sure that the chips were going to melt as she said, so, I put a little sample on parchment paper to see if it was for real.......touch of the doubting Thomas,











All looked fine so I proceeded to put my toffee on the parchment ........sprinkle with chopped pecans.I used about a cup. Seemed a bit heavy,,,,,,more like nut frosting than nut sprinkling.Then a
quick covering  with the chocolate chips, gently swirling in order to melt my chocolate in an even layer.




Of course this created a lovely tasting sampler on my spoon that I nibbled at while waiting for my masterpiece to harden. But, you know how it is......a watched pot never boils. It took about 1 hour to firm completely .......fortunately I have a marble slab that helped in the chilling process.


It was pretty easy to break into bit size pieces and I have to admit, this is a winner.

I think I'll be doing this again,but,for now I kind of like just looking at it on the shelf........said the hobbit.

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