Homemade Candies

This was one of those ambitious projects that seemed destined for trouble, but Brett likes to try ambitious things, and I'm always willing to go along for the ride.  We have a candymaking cookbook that we recently rediscovered when we were reorganizing the apartment and Brett's interest was sparked.

I got home from work the other day and Brett was sitting on the couch stirring homemade fondant (filling for candy.)  Turns out he had been stirring for almost an hour!  It was not easy work either.  That stuff was very thick.  When it finally set up, half was dyed yellow and flavored with lemon extract, and the other half was dyed green and flavored with peppermint extract.  He formed them into balls, wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for a couple of weeks until we felt the urge to make candy.

T.V. was terrible Saturday night so we decided, what better time to get out that fondant and start dipping!  Well, Brett got out one ball of fondant, unwrapped it, and quickly realized that it was not the correct consistency.  It stuck very badly to his hands and of course made rolling it into a long snake difficult.  Even more challenging was cutting it into half inch sections.  We did our best, but it was messy work.  Nothing was uniform or pretty.

Even though you are supposed to dip room temperature fondant we put it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it up and it seemed to work just fine.  Hand dipping is supposed to be messy business and believe or not Brett stayed relatively clean compared to the picture in the book.  Guess who got to lick his fingers :P (and guess who got sticky fondant on the camera...oops!)

Brett even tried to put a signature L (for lemon) on one them!

They weren't pretty, but they actually tasted pretty good.  The mint ones tasted pretty much like York Peppermint Patties (one of my favorite candies!)