SALLY'S CANDY ADDICTION by Sally McKenney

PUBLISHER: Race Point Publishing, 9/2015
GENRE: Cookbooks/Candy
MY GRADE: C

FROM PUBLISHER: Sally McKenney, creator and author of Sally's Baking Addiction, is back with a brand-new cookbook chock-full of a whole new host of treats for your sweet-tooth fix. If you're a candy and sweets lover, then look no further. Complete with over 75 brand new recipes, indulge in truffles, fudge, caramels, and marshmallows. And if you like Oreos, Reese's, Snickers, or other candy bar favorites, Sally will show you the best ways to incorporate these into cookies, cupcakes, bars, and more.

Complete with easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes, Sally's signature photography for every recipe, and snippets from Sally's own kitchen experiences, Sally's Candy Addiction has a recipe for every candy lover in your life.

THINGS I'VE MADE

ULTIMATE PEANUT BUTTER BROWNIES

This is a chocolate brownie with peanut butter 'filling' that I used as frosting. It's supposed to have a layer of chocolate frosting on top of the peanut butter filling with chopped Reese's Pieces on top of that, but I left those two off. The batter has both melted semi-sweet chocolate and a little unsweetened cocoa powder. They're bitter and wet-looking, not at all like Sally's photo of them. I made half the recipe in an 8" square foil lined pan and baked for 22 minutes. The filling/frosting is very good but needed more milk to make it creamier, but the brownies themselves aren't good at all. I'd never make these again.

COCONUT CANDY BARS

You're supposed to chill the mixture, cut it into tiny rectangles, and dip each one into melted chocolate. As you can see I made balls out of this candy instead. I think I got 46. These are made from sweetened condensed milk, a whole bag of sweetened coconut, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and salt. After mixing this up by hand (you can't use a mixer for this) I was very worried and almost threw it in the trash because it was so dense and sticky and unlike anything I'd ever worked with before.

I added one more cup of powdered sugar (3c. total), almond extract (3/8t.), and ground lightly toasted almonds. After pressing the mixture into a lined square pan and chilling it for a short time I decided to roll the mixture into balls. I quick-chilled the balls in the freezer on a wax paper-lined baking sheet, just until the mixture was firm enough to be dipped into melted chocolate. My balls flattened because the dough wasn't firm enough, but that's fine. When I make candy like this, such as peanut butter balls, I stick a toothpick in each ball for easy dipping. You don't need to mess with dipping the candy with two forks. I always use milk chocolate chips melted with paraffin wax.* The wax thins the chocolate, making it much easier to work with. The chocolate/wax mixture, when you dip something in it, will run off almost like water.

This is a really good recipe. Next time I'll chill the mixture in the mixing bowl for one hour, roll it into balls, chill those for another hour in the fridge or for 20 minutes in the freezer, then dip them in chocolate.

* Gulf Wax is a brand of paraffin wax. It's sold in a 16 oz. box and can be found in the baking isle of your grocery store. It has four 4 oz. blocks inside. You'll need half (2 oz.) of one block per 11.5-12 oz. bag of chocolate chips of your choice.

Chop the wax finely, add it, along with the chocolate, to a small bowl so you can melt it using the double boiler method. Sit the small bowl on top of a small pot, 1 qt. size if you have one, that's filled with 1" of simmering water. The bowl that's on top shouldn't touch the water beneath it. Keep stirring the wax/chocolate mixture until all the wax has melted. This could take ten minutes or so. I then pour the mixture into a very small (13 oz.), deep bowl (don't use a shallow bowl) and dip my candy into that. I also stick the toothpick into the side of the very cold candy because it'll leave a small hole when you remove it and the hole looks better on the side of the candy than on the top. Cover any remaining chocolate tightly and store in refrigerator. It will probably keep for a few months. To reuse, uncover and melt in the microwave.

MY THOUGHTS: Only one of the two recipes I tried turned out. There's a good variety of sweets in the book, mostly fudge and truffles, but not much that interests me. Some of the recipes are just variations on another recipe in the book. I'm pretty disappointed in this book but I may fiddle with a couple more recipes in the future.

I received this from the publisher in 2016 in exchange for an honest review.