I realize that I’m a few days late for writing a post about an easy party snack that takes very little effort, is tremendously delicious, and is great for sharing since it is HIGHLY addictive and calorie-dense. My bad.

But lucky for us, there are more reasons to celebrate and indulge coming right up. Valentines Day! The Olympics! Saturday!

If you don’t have a good roasted nut recipe in your arsenal, this is an excellent candidate. I’ve previously relied quite heavily on these little gems, but I’m glad to now have another that doesn’t scream “HOLIDAYS!” quite so loudly. You can use any mix of nuts you like: I had planned to only use cashews and tossed in pecans on a whim, but I now think I like the pecans even more than the cashews.

This is pretty simple stuff: preheat oven, mix the nuts with some goop, try not to burn them in the oven. In fact that last part might be the most challenging. I dropped the temp of the oven from the original recipe because I (gasp) burned the crap out of my first batch. Pecans are especially susceptible to burning, so keep a sharp eye.

The result is a pile of shiny, glazed pecans and cashews that is a pleasant, slightly savory departure from your average honey-roasted fare. Best of luck keeping them around for very long.

Savory Honey-Glazed Nuts
Adapted from Joy the Baker Cookbook

1 c roasted & salted cashews
1 c raw pecan halves
1/4 c honey
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp ground yellow mustard
a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper
salt

Preheat oven to 300°F. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together honey, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Add nuts and mix well until all nuts are coated. Spread nuts out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Add a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper.

Bake for 10 minutes, then stir the nuts, then bake for another 10 minutes. Remove nuts from the oven and immediately sprinkle lightly with salt. Allow the nuts to cool completely. Once you store them, the nuts will stick together slightly, but shouldn’t be sticky on your fingers.

ATTENTION STORES EVERYWHERE:

I love Christmas, I really do. But I’m not ready for it. Not for candy canes and glittery pine cones and red ribbons on the ends of the aisle. I’m not ready for the ghost and goblin decor to be heaped haphazardly on a clearance rack by the checkout while pine boughs and Santa hats flood in from the back room. It’s Halloween this week, thank you very much, it’s Thanksgiving in a month, and there are several beautiful weeks of autumn between now and then.

And for you big-budget stores, I’m really not ready for jingle bells and dancing elves to adorn your circulars & commercials.

So in defiance of the ever-earlier Christmas season, I offer these treats that scream “Halloween!” loudly enough to drown out the dancing elves, at least for the next few days.

I speak, of course, of caramel apples. It’s no wonder this treat is a classic: a tart, crisp apple enrobed in a sheen of chewy honey caramel is one of the greatest joys of fall. These apples are Pink Ladies, my favorite variety, and they hail from this year’s annual apple-picking trip, which has become a cornerstone of every fall for me (my little blog is named after it!)

Photo from Monica B.

The goal is to acquire enough fruit to span the gap between the last blackberries of summer and the first strawberries of spring, so I pick as many as I can. This year, the limit was half a bushel, so I filled my basket to the brim. But I’m willing to use a few of these precious fruits for a batch of caramel apples.

And what to dress them with I enjoy caramels of all sorts,  but I really love honey caramel. With only cream, sea salt, and honey, it’s a great way to celebrate local ingredients beyond even the apples.

And it’s super easy! With a cheap candy thermometer (available at any home goods store), a medium-sized pot, and a wooden spoon, you can make this caramel in less than 30 minutes.

Then the apples just get a quick bath in the hot caramel, and you’re done! A classic, delicious, show-stopping Halloween dessert.

Going to a Halloween party this weekend Show up with a tray full of these! But save one for yourself. The others will disappear faster than those fall decorations on the clearance rack.

Happy Halloween weekend!

Honey Caramel Apples
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

8 small apples, washed, dried, and cold
8 lollipop sticks
1 1/2 c heavy cream
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 c honey

Line a medium cookie sheet with parchment paper. Twist off the stems from each apple and all it to sit naturally. Insert a lollipop stick into the apple where the stem was, but make sure the stick is vertical. It may not follow the same track as the stem, but should stay vertical when the apple sits naturally. Set apples aside. Fill a large bowl half full with cold water and set near the apples. Make sure you also have a trivet or pot holder adjacent to the bowl and the apples for the pot of caramel when it’s time to coat the apples.

In a heavy medium pot, stir together cream and sea salt. Heat over medium until just before simmering, stirring occasionally. Stir in the honey with a wooden spoon and place a candy thermometer onto the pot to track the temperature. Increase heat to medium-high, stirring constantly. Mixture will come to a boil and will cook for 10-15 minutes. Once the mixture reaches hard ball stage or 260°F, remove the thermometer and remove the pot from the heat. Continuing to stir, dip the base of the pot into the cold water, taking care to ensure that no water gets into the pot. Stir until the caramel is smooth and beginning to thicken. Place pot on the trivet and tilt so the caramel pools on one side.

Spin each apple on its side in the pooled caramel until it is covered to your liking. If the caramel is sliding off the apple or is thinning too much, let it cool for a few more seconds. You may also need to blot the bottom of the apple on the bottom of the pot above the caramel pool to allow extra caramel to come off. Place each apple on the parchment-lined baking sheet.

You’ll need to work quickly to prevent the caramel from becoming too cool. If the caramel becomes difficult to work with, place it back on the stove for a few seconds to heat it back up.

Once all apples are coated with caramel, allow them to cool for 1-2 hours until set, then store in the refrigerator. Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

This morning, we’re here to talk about breakfast.

Most of the other breakfast-y treats I’ve posted here are warm, savory treats: they tend to revolve around potatoes, eggs, or bacon. You might assume that I eat these hearty country breakfasts every day, when in truth, breakfast is usually more of a poached egg and apple sort of affair.

But maybe there’s a happy medium. Something hearty and tasty, but quick enough to pack before I run out the door in the morning. How about some homemade granola?

This granola is not boring. This granola is not bland. This granola is full of oats and almonds and coconut, all toasted together on an ugly old cookie sheet.

Okay, the cookie sheet doesn’t have to be ugly. Mine are just ugly. Nothing a little parchment paper won’t fix!

Once this oat-y mixture is toasted, it’s actually pretty delicious all on its own. But let’s add some extra pizazz.

Hearty portions of dried cranberries and golden raisins compliment the crunchy oats and almonds nicely. And to sweeten the whole mess up, an even split of brown sugar and honey. The honey gives the granola the ability to clump up a bit, and the brown sugar adds a slighty gritty-but-pleasant texture. You can regular honey, but I use my favorite from a honey factory in my hometown. Amaretto whipped honey Yes, please.

After a good strong stir, the whole mass of granola gets tossed in a cake pan lined with waxed paper for a ride in the oven. Don’t skip the waxed paper… it will prevent your granola from sticking firmly to the bottom of the cake pan. I learned that one the hard way… trust me.

While it bakes, make sure you toss it around a bit so that every little clump gets nice and toasty brown. After about 30 minutes in the oven and a couple hours to cool, this stuff is ready for storage. Like any cereal, it will start to soften as it absorbs moisture from the air if kept at room temperature. However, it stays nice and crisp in the freezer. A freezer bag or large airtight container works just fine.

Then you’re set! Serve this up like cereal with some milk or stir it into your favorite yogurt. Breakfast delight!

Honey & Almond Granola
Adapted liberally from Smitten Kitchen

Note: The original source recipe is for granola bars. I tried them as bars the first time and found they were quite brittle and didn’t hold their shape very well, not to mention that they were very difficult to cut. If you do try this as a bar instead of loose granola, I’d love to hear about your attempts.

2 c rolled oats
1 c sliced almonds
1 c shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 c wheat germ
1/3 c honey
1/3 c brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c dried cranberries
3/4 c golden raisins

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. On the cookie sheet, mix together the oats, almonds, and coconut and spread evenly across the pan. Place cookie sheet in the oven and toast oat mixture for 12-15 minutes or until coconut is starting to turn golden brown.While mixture is toasting, line a 13″x9″ cake pan with waxed paper.

Reduce oven heat to 300 °F. Remove cookie sheet from the oven and pour oat mixture into a large mixing bowl. Add all remaining ingredients and mix well with a wooden spoon. Pour granola into the lined cake pan and spread out evenly and loosely. Bake for 30 minutes or until granola is golden brown, stirring every 6-8 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature. Store in an airtight container in the freezer to keep it crunchy! You can also store it in the pantry, but it will lose its crunch after a week or so. Serve alone, with milk, or with yogurt.

So far I’ve posted lots of wholesome (sort of), savory (mostly), meal-type recipes for your reading & eating enjoyment.

It’s time for something truly unnecessary, but totally worth your time.

Homemade candy!

Too difficult, you say Surely must be… handmade candy is wildly expensive, so it must be a complicated, time-consuming challenge that only fabulous cooks can achieve after years of training, right?

Not so.

Here’s the secret that gourmet candy companies don’t want you to know: many candies are deceptively easy to make. Really. A big pot, a wooden spoon, and a candy thermometer (you can find one for less than twenty bucks at a home goods store, maybe even your grocery store’s baking aisle) comprise the bulk of the equipment list.

Of course, you’ll need some ingredients. Candy with no ingredients would be, well, gross.

Of late, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with integrating honey into my cooking. In my continuing quest to eliminate non-local foods from my diet, white sugar is going to be a major challenge. It makes an appearance on the ingredient list of almost any recipe, but it only grows in like, three US states. (Is that redundant, US states Please advise.) Anyway, unless I plan to move to Florida, Hawaii, or Louisiana, the odds of finding sugar cane at my local farmers market are slim at best. Honey, on the other hand, is fashioned by busy little bees all over the place.

Unfortunately, one cannot simply swap honey for white sugar in many recipes and produce the same result. I learned that lesson in one of the variations of last month’s strawberry jam, and I admit, it was a bit disheartening.

My good friend Sierra (whose family keeps a few hives that produce fabulous honey) put it right: contrary to white sugar, honey tastes dramatically different from season to season, year to year, and hive to hive depending on which kinds of flowers are providing the bees with nectar. This variety is not a bad thing, but it does make honey a less predictable ingredient than ever-steady, ever-reliable white sugar.

This particular caramel contains both honey and white sugar. Figures. Here, the flowery-ness (a word) the honey provides is not a consequence but is, in fact, the key to the bright, old-fashioned, slightly floral flavor that differentiates this caramel from a bag of Milk Maids.

Now there is no reason that the omg-candy-is-an-elusive-domestic-art-totally-beyond-my-skill-level mentality should make its way into your brain while you’re making this treat. But you should stay focused on the task at hand. Like many candies, this process requires a brief but vigorous period of stirring once the caramel comes to a boil, and during that time you pretty much have to ignore your phone, the doorbell, your cat, your boyfriend, any any other noise-makers trying to get your attention.

I won’t lie… boiling caramel is hot. Really hot. It can and will jump out of the pot like lava balls on a mission. Wear closed toe shoes and an oven mitt. Your appendages will thank you.

After this brief period of arm-toning stirring, straight into the pan the candy must go. Then you wait…

…Tick tock…

… for a few hours while the caramel cools. You can also let it cool overnight – just cover the pan so any critters wanted or unwanted don’t give themselves a sugar high.

It will be sticky. I got almost all of mine out the pan. Almost. I consider this wildly successful.

From there, it’s a simple matter of chopping and wrapping your sheet of caramel into bite-sized pieces. Be prepared… you’ll have a lot. This batch made almost 100 caramels! You can wrap them in waxed paper, of course, but I suggest colorful little foil wrappers (I found them at the craft store) to dress things up and show off your little gems.

Your friends will be impressed, your sugar craving satisfied, and you can smile and pretend you slaved over your stove  for hours and are privy to some secret, uber-complicated recipes that mere mortals could never dream of completing…

Not really. Don’t be a meanie. If you can’t say something nice, shove a caramel in your mouth to stick your teeth together.

Honey Caramels
Adapted from Old Favorite Honey Recipes
Makes about 100 individually wrapped caramels

A note on candy temperatures: I’ve only recently begun using a candy thermometer. I first learned the water ball method to determine when candy was ready. If you prefer this method, the caramels should reach hard ball stage. If you’re new to candy-making, I recommend a candy thermometer. They are relatively inexpensive and remove the pressure of attempting to scoop boiling candy out of the pot and determining its consistency in cool water.

1 1/2 c whipping cream
2 c white sugar
1 c honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Heavily grease a 9″x13″ cake pan and set near the stove on hot pads. If you have a candy thermometer, attach it to a large pot (no smaller than 3 quarts.) Combine cream, sugar, and honey in the pot over medium-high heat. Stir steadily until ingredients are thoroughly combined. Once mixture begins to boil, stir constantly until candy reaches 260 ºF (hard ball stage.) Add vanilla. Remove from heat and pour immediately into the greased cake pan. Allow pan to cool completely, meaning the top of the caramel and the bottom of the cake pan should reach room temperature.

Once caramels have cooled, turn caramels out onto a cutting board. This might require a little… encouragement with a spatula or knife. Slice caramels into 1″ squares and wrap with wax paper or foil wrappers. Keep in a cool place.  Or try to, they’ll disappear quickly.