Batter Licker

Until the wedding, I had never made a brittle that wasn’t chock full of peanuts. I also had never been married, and had never had such beautiful signage for my dessert bar designed and made by my dear peanut-allergic friend CB of Darts Meet Heart.

So when I saw Irvin’s bacon peanut brittle pictures on Eat the Love, and subsequently became obsessed with it despite not being a bacon freak, I knew I had to find a way to include it in the dessert bar without causing CB’s cheeks to puff up.

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 11 (cashew bacon brittle) on BatterLicker.com!

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!

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!

This whole baking-a-lot-by-myself-in-my-kitchen thing is starting to make me go a little nuts. Not because I don’t enjoy it, but just because it’s a lot of time spent measuring, mixing, scooping, and waiting.

So I’ve been trying to find ways to keep the redundant work at least moderately amusing, which largely seems to entail inner – and occasionally outer – dialogue, mostly baking related, mostly looking deeper into things that I’ve always found odd about one baking ingredient (why is “evaporated” milk not called regular condensed milk?), or fascinating about another (how is baking soda so uplifting?).

In other words, I’ve embraced the nuttiness. Speaking of which, spiced nuts are some of the easiest and most delicious treats to make for any affair, and multiple internet sources tell me that they hold well for weeks. They’re also ridiculously easy to store and transport, so welcome to my nut house.

I started with cashews, a nut that I can eat raw, roasted, plain, salted, whole, and in pieces. But curried? Somehow, I had never gone down that road, and as a curry lover, it was about time. Gotta jazz it up for the wedding, right?

Welcome to my month-before-the-wedding blog series. … Read the rest of project wedding dessert bar: part 5 (curried cashews) on BatterLicker.com!