Chocolate Coconut Easter Candy

This is a recipe from my childhood. Mom made these at Easter only, and I remember vividly sitting perched on a kitchen stool next to the stove watching her dip them. She wasn't fond of working with melted chocolate, to say the least. I remember hearing a lot of French phrases during these candy-making sessions. That was never a good sign. But, these eggs were so good that I'm sure she thought that they were worth the effort.

The recipe couldn't be more simple.  All you need is:

The Creamy Centers
1.5 lbs powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 oz shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened--your choice)

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly by hand. It should look like this when you're done.

Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for about two hours.

Remove from fridge and form into egg-shapes. These can be any size you wish. I used a teaspoon to try to get them uniform, but a candy mold would do a much better job.  Work quickly--this stuff will get sticky in a hurry.

Cover and return to the refrigerator while you prepare your double-broiler to melt some chocolate. Any chocolate will do. Here I am using Nestle's Toll House Morsels.  When I have it, I use Scharffen Berger dark chocolate.

Dip each egg-shaped center into the chocolate and place on a wax paper-lined baking sheet to dry.

As you can see, I'm no Jacques Torres.

Mom used to pipe frosting rosebuds and leaves onto her candies, making them even more special, but I don't like working with frosting at all so mine remain plain.

My husband, the coconut-hater, suggests replacing the coconut with oatmeal.  Maybe next year.  If you try that, let me know how it works out.

I had a watcher, too, who also likes to perch from the kitchen stool.

Egg Hunt

Our friends' daughter turned five last Sunday. For her birthday, she didn't want presents. She wanted an Egg Hunt. Sweet!

Our hostess went overboard and provided many dozens of eggs for the three little kids to find.

Liam caught on pretty quickly, with some help from Laurel. He still doesn't know there's stuff inside the eggs. That's fine by me!

Baking

Baking for Easter Sunday brunch. After last year's brunch, none of us got hungry until about 7pm. I will not be planning a large dinner!
The menu: muffins. Lots of muffins (banana, carrot, and apple), omelets, waffles with homemade strawberry sauce, sausage links, mini bagels, berries, cantaloupe, and candy, candy, candy. More on that later.

Here's a Laurel-drawing for the fun of it. Dig the pristine kitchen? Yeah, not in this lifetime.

I have a blog?

We're 30 weeks into this pregnancy today--woot! I'm huge--huge I tell you! So far it's been a blissfully healthy pregnancy with no major problems. ...unless you count reflux that can be fixed by (exorbitantly priced) meds which the insurance company won't cover. Humph!

In other news: Patrick had been scouring online sites for bigger homes almost ever since we discovered that #5 was on the way. The debate had been "remodel or buy" and "buy" won out. Contractors are expecting to be paid around $100/sf, judging by the six different estimates we procured. That seems too high for us, especially considering the noise, the mess, and the fact that we still wouldn't have a backyard to speak of when it was all finished.

We've spent the last many weekends touring homes for sale. Up the stairs, down the stairs...many were tri-levels or even quad-levels. It was exhausting (did I mention how huge I am?). Most times, we'd return to our own house happy to have it and try to think of ways we could squeeze one more resident in. He'd start out tiny after all!

Then it happened. We found The House we thought was meant for us. We bid. We prayed. We toured the inside twice, and drove past a dozen times. We hoped--but someone else got it. Rats! Double-rats! I didn't want to look further. Too stressful.

Patrick is not so easily daunted, however, and last weekend we found another great house. It is better in many ways even than the previous one. We bid again, and we're praying more. If this one isn't it, I really am done looking. This baby is going to be here in ten weeks; I don't have time to look further.

I'll save the details until later...wouldn't want to jinx anything ;)

Euclid Would Be Proud

Conversation at dinner the other night:
Holly (13)--Imagining a fourth dimension is really difficult.
Laurel (10)--What is there in one dimension?
The Dad--A point.
Holly--No, a line has one dimension, length.
The Dad--I was looking at it from the end.
Holly--Lines don't have ends.

Pretzels for Lent

My oldest gave up desserts for Lent. I've been feeling sorry for her ever since Ash Wednesday. She never complains, but I still find myself resisting baking cookies or serving ice cream so as not to make her Lenten sacrifice worse than it needs to be.

Today the kids and I decided to participate in that centuries-old Lenten tradition: pretzel baking. These could hardly be considered dessert, yet would be a bit of a treat. I dug up a couple of recipes and set my chefs to work.

Laurel and Sean took turns stirring the wet ingredients, while Holly measured out the dry ingredients.


We dumped the wet into the dry and then took turns kneading the dough. This was a messy endeavor!


Sean found kneading easier when the bowl was placed in the sink.

Eventually the dough came together into a smooth, elastic mass. When that happened, we transferred it to a larger, greased bowl to rise. We placed it in the oven to rise for thirty minutes with only the oven light on for warmth.


Liam really, really wanted the "light OFF", and so this step was a bit more challenging than I had anticipated.

"Off!"


"What's wrong with you? I said, 'OFF!'"

While the dough was rising, I got the soda-bath ready. This is where the newly-formed pretzels would be plunged until they floated back to the surface, ready for the oven.

Rolling out the dough was a lot of fun. Sean (6) had some trouble with sticking, so after a few attempts I rolled and he twisted.



The girls (10 and 13) had no trouble rolling out the dough.

Laurel's latest nail designs.


Each pretzel got a soda bath. This one looks more like a blob, but I'm sure it was yummy.

After boiling, they went into a 450-degree oven for 10 minutes. Once out of the oven they each got a slight coating of melted butter and were then sprinkled with one of three toppings: Parmesan cheese, coarse salt, or sesame seeds.


I found a recipe at allrecipes.com that I tweaked just a little. If I ever make these again (and the kids are already asking when we can do it again!) I will either use Reynold's Release wrap on the baking sheet, or else I will grease the baking sheet. I really hate the process of greasing bakeware, so I always use parchment instead. Usually this works great. This time, it was a bit of a disaster. The pretzels stuck like glue to the parchment. By the time I discovered the error of my ways, I had only enough dough for three more pretzels but those got the royal Reynold's Release wrap treatment. They slid off the pan like nobody's business.

These came out a little darker than I prefer, but I think it had more to do with the scant number of pretzels on the pan rather than what was used to coat the pan.

Not the most beautiful, but delicious nonetheless.

At Long Last

Due to some unfortunate weather back in December, our anniversary dinner had to be post-poned until recently.

It was worth the wait.

Nineteen years went by fast!