Candy Corn

Halloween is just not Halloween without candy corn, and this year I decided to make my own. I learned a lot from this experience:
1. Candy Corn is bad for you, really bad for you. If you had the choice to eat a handful of candy corn or a handful of fondant, eating the fondant would be the healthier choice. Yikes!
2. What store bought candy corn is trying to be. There was this ah-ha moment of "oh, so that's what they were going for, that's what it's suppose to taste like." 

I used:
This Recipe: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/mighty-appetite/2007/10/getting_handy_with_candy_corn.html

You Need:
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup non-fat milk powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup light corn syrup
5 tablespoons salted butter*
 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Red and yellow food coloring

* original recipe calls for unsalted, but I used salted at the advice of Cakespy at Seriouseats (Her recipe didn't call for additional salt though) and I'm happy with the results.

Sift Powdered Sugar, powdered milk and Salt together. Set aside. 

In a heavy bottomed pot* bring butter, granulated sugar, corn syrup, and vanilla to a boil. When you start seeing bubbles, reduce to medium heat and bring to 225-230 degrees F, (right before it reaches thread stage)** Then remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar/milk/salt mix being sure to it's fully incorporated. ***

* Recipe says to use a wide shallow pan, but that makes it harder to get an accurate temperature.
** Recipe suggested this would take 5 minutes, It did not! After about 3 I was there, but this could be due to my ignoring the side bubbles.
*** This is the worst part! It starts to getting really hard to stir after you just add the first half of powdered sugar mix, and you really can't "get in there" because it's so hot. I couldn't seem to get the right leverage because it's so hot and you have to hold the pot in place as you try and stir the stuff in. I made a second batch and instead of mixing in the pot I transferred it to the Stand mixer. It was so much easier that way.

After it cools and firms up a bit (but not too much) divide it into 3 parts. Leave one white, dye one yellow, and one orange. (or really whatever colors you fancy)

After this point my hands were constantly covered in food coloring and candy dough so I stopped taking pictures. Sorry.

Roll the dough into snakes and line them up in the color order you want. Use a rolling pin to flatten them out a bit.

 Cut out the pieces.

You're not even confined to making the traditional triangle shape.

Enjoy!

Some P.S.es

1.) This exists!

2.) Jack and I are doing trunk-or-treat at the Church tonight... and this is how his costume looks:

I gotta get on that!

Slightly Evil Acorn Squash and Pumpkin Soup.

It's been an exceedingly stressful week and it's taken a while getting this up but here it is.

 It's soup season! Today I combine these recipes (because I don't actually have the right ingredients to make anything.)

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-acorn-squash-soup-10000001924739/

and

http://www.asweetpeachef.com/entrees/roasted-acorn-squash-soup/

 Ingrediants:
1 pie pumpkin
1 acorn squash
carrots
apple
butter
honey
sage
marjoram
ginger
nutmeg
pepper
salt
onion
bouillion or consommé
evaporated milk

Cut in half the Pumpkin and Acorn Squash and gut them. brush with melted butter and some honey and roast @ 400 degrees Celcius for about 40 minutes.

Now, take it out of the oven and let it cool for about 15 minutes. **TIP: don't turn the oven off, just turn it down to 250.

Ok, now peel and chop the carrots, onion, apple. (As I was peeling and cutting the apple on the cutting board that I had just used to cut up the onion, I discovered that onion and apple are an AMAZING combo!! I started small, then graduated to this)

Sautee the onion, carrots, apple, and spices in butter. I pretty much just eyeball my spices, throw in pinches of this and dashes of that, dance around my cauldron, and pretend like I'm a witch making a potion. If you're not comfortable with black magic, you can use this as a guide: 1/8 tsp ginger, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp. sage, a faerie's portion of salt, and a pixie handful of pepper.

I have a confession to make, while I was scraping all the loveliness out of the acorn squash and pumpkin my shoulder devil popped up and was like, "You're not really going to put that whole pumpkin in the soup right? You could make a whole batch of pumpkin cookies with that! The soup will still taste good without it, besides that's way too much soup anyway, it would be a waste."

My shoulder devil is a very convincing gal and since my shoulder angel was ignoring me for some reason. (she's apparently against my overstepping of the line between cooking and the occult. In my defense, it's a pretty thin line.) Whatever, more for me and shoulder devil. Plus, I was going to have evaporated milk left over too which is really good for icing.


Make your bouillon or consommé  as per instructions. In other news, my consommé is extremely kosher. I don't know how something can be more kosher than other things, I'm not quite sure how that whole things works but but this consommé mentions it's kosherness 8 times. I used it because it doesn't contain beef fat, chicken meat, chicken fat, soy or hydrolyzed corn protein like knorr chicken flavor bouillon does and I feel like it's kosherness counteracts the witchcraft thing. You know like how the apple and apple cider vinegar counteracts the sweetness of the squash and pumpkin, the kosherness balances out the evil. The number one rule in soup making is to always maintain a balanced chi (chi as in life force energy, not as in the tea, do not add tea to this soup, 'cus that kind of evil can't be balanced out.)


Wow, anywho, add 4 cups consommé, 1/2 tsp cider vinegar (had I not been using evaporated milk or had a more tart apple like a granny smith, I probably would have opted out of the vinegar) and the pumpkin and squash to the dutch oven and bring just to a boil.

See, that looks way less evil. Now, put a lid on it and stick it in the oven. (250 F for 3 hours)

**Fun fact, In Dutch a "Dutch Oven" is called a "braadpan" which just means a roast pan. (ok, that wasn't so fun, but it was a fact.)

Wait 3 hours (you can clean up the gigantic mess you made in the kitchen now)

 Who needs scentsy or fabreeze when you have this cooking in your oven for 3 hours? Now, add some evaporated milk (cream would be best, but I didn't have cream) and puree it (A stick blender works best, but you can also just transfer it to a regular blender or food processor)

One of the best things about making soup is that when it's ready you get to yell, "Soups on!" I'm also looking into buying a triangle to ring as I say it.

I added some more evaporated milk at the end and tried to make it swirly and pretty, that didn't really work too well. If I had a restaurant I would serve this in a roasted pumpkin shell (cut across the middle so it's like a bowl) and I would use heavy cream and do fancy cream swirls. But I don't have a restaurant, I have this:

 Oh, and thanks shoulder devil. You were totally right, cookies and soup were made for each other like Challah and Meringue.