BS: Favorite Christmas Candy

Subject: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 07:05 PM

Back in June, I decided my health would be better if I cut out sugar as much as possible. I've done very well this year, but now that Christmas time is here, the treats are tempting.

For the holidays, my mom used to make divinity, fudge, almond rocha and other treats. There are all those ribbon candies, candy canes, aplets and cotlets, almond bark, and other Christmas candies.

I'm working hard at resisting, but divinity is still the one I can't resist.

Any favorites of the season?

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 07:21 PM

For me Alice, it has always been homemade caramels. No commercial product ever matches that distinctive flavor. If I gave in to the urge to make some, I'd be sicker than a dog and weigh 400 pounds by New Years.........LOL.............Damn Alice! I wish to hell you'd never started this thread(;<))

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 07:57 PM

For a couple of years, I worked for a local company that specializes only in making caramels... gourmet caramels that are made with real cream, butter... taste better than most home made.

Rapaire can attest to how great they are.

http://bequetconfections.com/



Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 07:58 PM

Bequet caramels are the only commercial ones I can say taste as good or better than home made caramels. They are made in small batches by hand with best ingredients possible.

All other commercially bought caramels I've tried taste like wax.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Maryrrf
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 08:08 PM

Those Bequet caramels look delicious - I was tempted to order some but goodness knows I don't need the calories. I don't really have a favorite Christmas candy, but I do love rum balls. I think they are classified as cookies though.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 08:10 PM

When I worked for Bequet, we only made 4 kinds, soft, chewy, chocolate, and the chipotle, which was a custom order. Recently I tried the Butterscotch, and now that is my favorite.

Where's Rapaire? We need his testimonial.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 08:16 PM

Popcorn balls. I forgot about them, but we used to have them at Halloween and sometimes at Christmas, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: gnu
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 08:40 PM

Shortbread cookies. HOT mincemeat pie with vanilla ice cream.

Gosh... Just got a tear in my eye, again. Two days ago, I took Mum (83) to a large grocery store downtown that has an amazing display of confections of all sorts. The cakes were visually stunning - very creative and works of culinary art. She resisted buying. At the end of the visit, she went back and looked at them again. We left without a purchase.

Her father was a master baker, trained by monks at a seminary. He and my grandmother had a "corner store" where they also sold baked goods. You can imagine...

On the way home, she said that she had "a thing" for sweets because, at Xmas and Easter, the kids got cake and ice cream. If they were really good, they got extra. That's a bit of the story.

I drove a wee slower after she told me the story.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 08:52 PM

gnu, that bring a memory for me....
my grandmother, Maggie McConnell, was the wedding cake baker in the little town of Roundup, Montana. Their homestead was in Musselshell county, but for a time, when my mother was young, my grandmother worked as the ranch cook at Ringling, Montana, for the summer ranch of the Ringling brother's circus.
(The town that inspired Jimmy Buffet lyrics - Ringling, Ringling, slippin' away Only forty people livin' there today.)

I remember seeing the wedding cake, waiting for a bride's family to pick up, in my grandmother's kitchen. It looked like it had white lace hanging from the edges of the layers.

I inherited the hand made icing tips and the rose nail she used to make the frosting decorations.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:01 PM

Not that it tasted so good, but ribbon candy is unique and seemed only to be on sale at Christmas. old fashioned Ribbon Candy

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:04 PM

And we would only have chocolate covered cherries at Christmas.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:06 PM

Caramels- drool! A bakery in my hometown made soft caramels, cut into cubes, that were unequalled by any I have had since.

Here in Calgary, Bernard Callebaut, a Belgian choclateer, makes caramels (going by your link, Alice, they seem to have the shape of Bequets); they are very good, but not the same as the ones I remember.
I like the Callebaut truffles and usually get them.
Link
Callebaut
and look for their 'chocolate map' which shows the majority of their goodies.
They also have a store in the United States, I believe run by a brother.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:07 PM

Marzipan!

And my favorite cookie recipe, in my grandmother's handwriting, of "Age-old family Christmas Cookies" which is a rolled-out sugar cookie with orange juice and grated orange peel instead of vanilla. Yum!

Alice, I have so much respect for your decision to cut out sugar. I am coming to realize I have to cut way back, at least on refined sugar and sweets. I decided to just be aware of it during this tough season when we're bombarded by goodies, but not to take action until after the festivities are over, for this year at least. How are you doing?

Allison

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:17 PM

After a few days of avoiding anything sweetened, like baked goods or candy or juice or sweet fruit, back in June, I broke my craving for it and vegetables became my mainstay. Then.... the holidays. Just in the last couple of weeks I've started eating cookies once in awhile and now there seems to be fudge everywhere!

I'm back to thinking it has to be a complete deletion, otherwise even a taste starts the sweet craving again. It's back to veggies for me!

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:23 PM

I can enjoy some candies... (my mother always made rum balls).. but the cookies are what I carve. Come to think of it, rum balls are just spherical, spicy cookies.

And simple sugar cookies or shortbread...yum!

We need a thread on pies.....

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:29 PM

Well, we did have this old thread about Pie Party.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:30 PM

I agree, Bill.
I like cookies better than candy or cake, and I like Pie better than any of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: maire-aine
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 12:10 AM

Those Italian nougat candies with the almonds and the thin wafer layer on the outside, esp. the ones with orange and lemon flavor. Mmmm...

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 12:13 AM

Of course if you grow up in Ohio, THESE are popular not just at Christmas but all year round.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 01:12 AM

Okay, I know Ohio is the Buckeye state, but I'd never heard of buckeye candies until now! From Wikipedia, a peanut butter and chocolate candy made to resemble the nut of a buckeye tree.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: KT
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 01:29 AM

Okay, Alice, you've got me running for the chocolate -covered caramel macadamia clusters! I picked them up this afternoon to have on hand for the holidays, and had absolutely NO intention of opening them. mmmm......

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 01:52 AM

Oh, that sounds really, really, yummy.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Alice
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 05:16 PM

And chocolate turtles.

Only had them at Christmas.

One year I had a job where everyone received the gift of See's Candies.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 12:19 AM

Aunt Liz's peanut butter fudge and peanut butter pinwheels. Fudge made the hard way with no marshmallow cream.
Aunt Mary's Bourbon Balls.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 01:36 AM

Chocolate covered cherries and truffles have been traditional in my family. They're definitely some of my favorites.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: gnu
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 07:10 AM

This AM I got two mincemeat pies at Atlantic Superstore, two fruit cakes at Sobeys and two seat covers at Walmart. I know that seat covers are not at ALL "candy" but it was kinda fun not getting elbowed at Walmart. Of course I was there before 6AM.... gee, some people are grumpy when they have to work all night.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 09:28 AM

As a child my fav was the Lifesaver's Story Book. always in the stocking and variety of flavours that were trade-able with siblings.

As a teen I only wanted the Pep o Mint Lifesavers

Now? I would like some of my Mom's sea foam candy.

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 01:11 PM

We made caramels: chewy, sticky vanilla and chocolate. We'd wrap them individually in waxed paper, than then package them in the boxes that the UNICEF cards came in, with the clear plastic tops, tied with gold string. Used to give a box to my teachers in elementary school. Later, I made rum balls as well.

We had an exchange student from Munich one year, and for years afterwards we would receive a Christmas box with Bavarian cookies and candies. I learned to love marzipan that way.

~ Becky in Long Beach for the festive season this year

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: Art Thieme
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 01:22 PM

Through the years, the Playboy playmate for the month of December has always been enough for me!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Favorite Christmas Candy
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 11:06 AM

Cut rocks - a tube of hard candy with a flower or flag design in the center and a contrasting outside coat - cut into 1/2 " pieces.

But I loved the ribbon candy my mother bought - paper thin and almost impossible to handle without breaking. All different flavors and colors.