Holiday Candy
Okay, okay, I’ve been absent for awhile. But never fear! I’ve been busy. Yet another family tradition I take seriously is making candy and cookies for the holidays every December. My mother would always make at least a dozen kinds of cookies and candy and pack them up in little tins or festive bags tied with ribbons and hand them out to friends or as thank-yous.
While I have yet to outdo her legacy, this year brings 8 kinds of cookies and candy. I’ll start with a brand-new recipe I hadn’t tried before: Hannah Kaminsky’s Pecan Pie Truffles. This recipe came from a free issue of VegNews that somehow ended up in my mailbox. I was excited as soon as I read the title — my mother is a pecan pie aficionado, AND she loves chocolate besides. Could this be the vegan recipe that would break into my mother’s heart and become a new classic, to be shared with clueless omni friends and coworkers year after year?
I plotted with excitement for a couple of weeks, until the day came that I would begin my baking extravaganza. I got all the ingredients out. Then I read the recipe. It’s been so long since I’ve read a magazine that I forgot the golden rule of magazines: never trust anything published in a magazine. Most (if not all!) of it is utterly fabricated, designed to fool you into purchasing something you don’t either want or need. And so my reading revealed to me sadly: the innards of the truffle would be wholly uncooked! My dreams of pecan pie filling were instantly shattered, as the key to pecan pie is simply a cooked, gelatinous, flavored sugar base. These truffles were merely a twist on one of my mother’s favorite holiday candies: bourbon balls. Not the worst twist of fate, so onward I forged:
As I was expecting the filling to be cooked, all I had on hand was a $10 bottle of whiskey, so we’ll just say these candies have a bit of a kick. Beware of mixing freshly toasted pecans with whiskey — the rubbing alcohol fumes just about knocked me out.
One other thing I researched unfortunately after completing the balls was the tempering of chocolate. Chocolate is surprisingly a complex thing to work with. In all my work with ganaches, frostings, and general baked goods, I had never noticed this… until the year I made fudge from a (terrible) recipe and the chocolate seized up on me, resulting in an irreparably gritty mess. You also have to be certain not to burn the chocolate, and to temper it to keep it shiny and smooth. In my pictures here you can see faint speckles of white on the chocolate; it’s not as bad as it looks (the texture and flavor is completely fine), but it’s definitely not the professional sheen I’m going to aim for in the future. (More on chocolate to come!) In any case, the verdict on the pecan balls is to be determined, though I have thusfar received one enthusiastic thumbs up from an avid whiskey drinker. It was the same person that lent me the whiskey, however….
Next: Magic Cookie Bars. Sweet, buttery, and slightly salty? Soft, crunchy, and chewy all at once? These bars have always been one of my favorites. I think they earned the title “magic” because they’re so damn simple — seriously, a 3 year-old could make them. All you do is press a graham cracker crust into a 9×13″ pan, pour sweetened condensed soy milk on top, and sprinkle evenly with chocolate, coconut, and chopped nuts (I like pecans best). Tamp it down a smidge (this is key!), toss it in the oven, and you’re good to go.
The graham cracker crust here is made of graham crackers I made from scratch (with graham flour, which gives it the BEST texture) a few months ago. I was saving a bunch of them to make s’mores, but I never really got around to making the marshmallows (due to my fear of whipping up boiling hot sugar without a splash guard). But enough excuses — these worked very nicely as a crust. They were a more molasses-y variety, so it’s a deeper flavor than the usual sugary, light flavor of store-bought graham crackers, but it’s the only thing barring (ha!) this recipe from tasting exactly like the original, and frankly, I like it equally well; molasses is really complementary to chocolate.
Here’s my recipe for sweetened condensed milk which I use in EVERYTHING:
Vegan Sweetened Condensed Milk
½ c boiling water
3 tbsp vegan margarine
½ c sugar
1⅓ c soya powder
Combine ingredients in a blender. Chill until thickened (I skip this step when pouring it directly onto a bar, so it’s easier to spread). Makes 1⅓ cups (about a standard can’s worth)
I had a minor crisis when I got around to making peanut butter fudge — the tried-and-true recipe I was planning on using called for marshmallow fluff. Apparently Ricemellow Creme is only carried in 1 (yes, ONE) store in all of Philadelphia, and they only had the strawberry flavor in stock, which really was NOT going to cut it. After this baffling fact was confirmed (seriously, this is not a niche product! especially not during winter and the holiday season generally), and upon realizing I planned to use it in more than one recipe, I decided that I would just break down and finally try making marshmallows from scratch, omitting the final steps, and hope to end up with marshmallow fluff of sorts. This worked great until I felt like my wrist was going to self-destruct, and left the stirring to someone else. Mere minutes later I returned to the room to check on its progress, dropped a bit into some cold water, and realized my “fluff” was at a hard crack. Oops. The stuff is still in the pan I poured it into, as I’m pretty sure I need an ice pick to get it out.
On to plan B: finding a recipe closer to the standard profile of how to create fudge–basically a modified version of caramel, with additional flavor stirred in. I used a modified version of this recipe; it tastes great, and is soft and smooth (though next time I’ll probably attempt to cook it to a slightly less firm stage, as the peanut butter and confectioners’ sugar firm it up quite fast). Before beginning, note that swiftness is key: get everything set out and measured beforehand, and be ready to act fast as soon as you take the caramel off the stove; you’ll be racing the clock from that point on, and if you want a smooth finish to your fudge, you’ll need to get it in that pan with as little interference as possible. The softer it is when you flip it into the pan, the better.
Peanut Butter Fudge
½ c vegan margarine
2 c brown sugar
½ c soy milk
1 c peanut butter
1½ tsp vanilla extract
3 c powdered sugar
Line an 8×8″ pan with parchment paper, or oil very lightly. Measure out all your ingredients and have them ready to be added. Put confectioners’ sugar in a medium mixing bowl. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar and soy milk. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. It’s ready when a drop of it in a cup of cold water forms a little ball (any earlier and it’ll be a wiggly thread). Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla. Pour over confectioners’ sugar in a large mixing bowl. Stir until smooth; pour into pan. Shake the pan to distribute it to all the corners and edges of the pan; don’t try to smooth it manually unless you must, as it will mar the finish of the top of the fudge. Chill, covered in plastic, until firm, and cut into small squares (it’s very rich and sweet!).
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[...] Next: on to the filling. Combining soy powder, margarine, sugar, and butter in a blender until smooth (you’re making vegan sweetened condensed milk!). [...]
Just to be clear, is soya powder the same as soy flour?
They’re not the same thing, but you may be able to substitute soy flour for soy powder. I haven’t done it though, so if you try it, let me know how it turns out! Soy powder is ground finer and intended for making soy milk; it won’t end up gritty like soy flour may. The soybeans are cooked before grinding, so the flavor may be slightly different as well.
Okay, thanks for the info! I love experimenting, I’ll let you know how it turns out.
I am making the peanut butter fudge right now!
Any tips for smoothing out the confectioner’s sugar lumps, small though they may be?
Awesome! If your confectioner’s sugar is lumpy, just sift it into a bowl before adding it in. Unless it’s really lumpy, just stirring it real well before pouring it into the pan should take care of everything; I’ve never had that problem myself.
I am sure I will love it. It’s been cooling in the fridge for about two hours now, so I might get to taste test before bed. It was going to be a treat for tonight’s Chuck premiere on NBC, but it will be just as good to share with the omnis at work tomorrow.