Batter Licker

This toffee is an oldie but goodie. It is the first candy I ever learned to make (Thanks Mom!). Except that, back then, I learned to make it with milk chocolate and almonds. Or maybe it was pecans. I forget (it’s been a couple decades). Now, I prefer it topped with bittersweet chocolate and pistachios.

The key is to start with room temperature butter. Or fake it with a microwave. Or deviate from the recipe a little and just melt the butter slowly in a pot before adding the sugar.

Reach deep down into that almost-empty 10-pound bag of sugar. I couldn’t believe I was almost at the bottom. Good thing I had another 10-pound bag on hand … because that’s the kind of over-preparation I do when making everything for my own wedding dessert bar, apparently.

Must stem from Girl Scouts back in the day. “Be prepared,” which in my perfectionist mind translates to “be more than prepared at all times for things you couldn’t possibly imagine might happen at the beginning of a project.” Like actually using up an entire 10-pound bag of sugar.

Welcome to my month-before-the-wedding -continues-into-month-after-the-wedding-because-I-didn’t-get-my-sh*t-together blog series. … Read the rest of project wedding dessert bar: part 9 (toffee) on BatterLicker.com!

I’m not trying to fool you. I know you’ve seen me make caramel before, and in step-by-step detail. But not with bourbon and Fall spices.

For wedding dessert bar purposes, I kept up appearances by making about 400 of my standard fleur de sel caramels. I had to, or there might have been an Occupy Dessert Bar movement. Seriously. People get passionate over burnt sugar with salt, at least in my family.

But for my own creative purposes, I wanted to try something a little different. Something infused with Autumn. Something boozy. Bourbon spice caramels were born.

Welcome to my month-before-the-wedding -continues-into-month-after-the-wedding-because-I-didn’t-get-my-sh*t-together blog series. … Read the rest of project wedding dessert bar: part 8 (fleur de sel caramels; bourbon spice caramels) on BatterLicker.com!

** I wrote this 2 days before the wedding, thought I’d have time to type up the recipe before the wedding, was threatened by the blue screen of death on my laptop, Jay fixed it, and then (inevitably) got wrapped up in other pre-wedding matters. **

It’s almost 4 a.m., and I’m wide awake. I’ve been too excited about the wedding to sleep soundly. As a result, I’ve been running mostly on adrenaline since the sleepless nights began this past Sunday.

In my sleep-impaired state, I’ve decided to deviate from my original plan to share dessert bar recipes in the order that I make them. So I’m hopping ahead of part 8 (toffee) and part 9 (caramels – fleur de sel, and spiced bourbon), which I promise to share at a later time (most likely post-wedding; turns out I still have cookies to bake off, chickpeas to crisp up, and s’mores brownies to figure out … not to mention memorizing the vows I wrote and learning new moves so our first dance isn’t entirely awkward and reminiscent of junior high school slow dances).

Instead, I would like to share these chocolate cognac truffles, which are decadent but not too fussy – especially if you can rope someone into helping you form them into balls. It’s probably best to start with a more uniform selection of chocolate, but these truffles were admittedly an afterthought composed of leftover chocolate from other dessert bar projects. Hence the haphazard selection. including semi-sweet, bittersweet, and 100% chocolate.

Welcome to my month-before-the-wedding -continues-into-month-after-the-wedding-since-I-didn’t-get-my-sh*t-together blog series. … Read the rest of project wedding dessert bar: part 10 (chocolate cognac truffles) on BatterLicker.com!

The nut parade continues with chili lime peanuts because, in my opinion, variety always makes things a little more fun.

While the curried cashews and brown sugar, rosemary, bourbon-brined almonds were fairly easy to manage, these peanuts manage to be even simpler.

I threw peanuts into a bowl, but on a lazier day, I strongly believe these nuts could mix up quite nicely with the spices directly on a rimmed baking sheet. That’s right. One less thing to clean up.

But I didn’t think of that until after the peanuts had already made their way into the bowl. So I went ahead and zested a lime straight in there.

Welcome to my month-before-the-wedding blog series. … Read the rest of project wedding dessert bar: part 7 (chili lime peanuts) on BatterLicker.com!

While the curried cashews were undergoing their second tanning session of the day, I prepared a brown sugar, rosemary and bourbon brine to soak the almonds in.

I know. It’s like the almonds are getting the Thanksgiving turkey prep treatment. But trust me. This brining method? Best way to infuse a lot of flavor into almonds while keeping things clean (i.e., without covering them in a candied curry mixture whose yellow tinge rudely stains snackers’ fingers; curried cashew eaters beware!).

Start prepping the brine by throwing some brown sugar into a pot.

Ahhhhh bourbon.

Sometimes it’s the devil, but I keep it around anyway like a trouble-making friend from the good ol’ sorority days. Perhaps it’s because bourbon makes me nostalgic for late evenings spent deep in conversation with Uncle Bill. Or because nothing else warms me up quite as quickly on a bone-chilling winter night, especially one spent visiting Jay’s Grams in Boston.

Welcome to my month-before-the-wedding blog series. … Read the rest of project wedding dessert bar: part 6 (brown sugar, rosemary and bourbon-brined almonds) on BatterLicker.com!