day 8: homemade candy

During the past year or so, I have been receiving an ongoing and delicious introduction into the world of homemade candy. I would say that that it is an in-depth study, except that it's really more of a passing fancy around the winter holidays. My coworkers are a particularly good source of the good stuff. Homemade fudge, homemade walnut fudge, homemade caramel corn, and homemade licorice taffy. Yum. This is what separates the homemade from the store-bought: butter. Delicious, delicious butter. Before these particular treats, I couldn't quit understand a "buttery flavor" in candy.

Last year I just watched the candy parade, but this year I jumped in and made some of my own. May I present to you, Candied Chocolate Covered Orange Rinds! (No, there isn't any butter in them.) I love these things, and so I gave them as little gifties at Christmas. I couldn't believe I actually made them, because they are just the kind of thing I think about making, but then don't. They are not hard. I used this recipe from NPR. The article's author makes them out to be difficult and laborious, but I think she's a bit dramatic. Really, it just takes a lot of boiling, and anyone can boil. The weird thing is, all our new recipes seem to come from NPR lately. I think that's kind of obnoxious, like we're such big NPR fans that we only eat their food. I didn't even hear about the oranges on the radio, google just brought the link to me. Ug. But they did have a crowd-pleasing tarte tatin from yet another Dorie. I'm not going to argue with that.