Christmas Candy

We're back in the swing of things yet haven't fully recovered from our holiday haze. We had a wonderful Christmas with both of our families. I believe that the holidays only get sweeter with each passing year as we learn to soak up the memories we are making that will someday only live on in our minds.

For many years now, my grandmother (Bami) has dreamed of having a Christmas candy day with all of the girl cousins over the holidays. School, kids, work schedules and many other things have gotten in the way and kept it from happening, but we were finally able to make it happen in 2010! (even if some cousins were only there in spirit!)









Almost all of our treats turned out wonderful! Hopefully my mom won't get too mad that I'm sharing this story...but it was too big of a part of the day to keep to myself! Erin and I made ourselves at home at got busy working on a few recipes. My mom was going to make Pecan Pie Muffins so that Bami would have them Christmas morning for the brunch she was hosting. Just as Mom has almost finished mixing the muffins, she realizes that she needs to run back home to get something for our next baking project. I take over the muffins, get them spooned into the pans and stick them into the over. About 15 minutes later, Mom is back and the timer is going off. She takes the muffins out, notes that they look different than the first time she made them, lets them sit for a while and then tries to start taking them out of the pan.

They won't budge.

Three of us take knives to them and are trying to scrape them out. Bami suggests putting them back in the oven to warm them up so they'll be easier to get out. It doesn't work. We end up with chunks of muffins that tasted great, but were no where presentable for brunch.

Needless to say, Mom is a little frustrated at this point. We take a lunch break and then she tries to tackle the muffins again. Things seem to be going ok, when my mom starts smelling something burning. We all start looking around to see what it could be, and then we see that the pecans, which were roasting at in the oven 250, got bumped up to 350 to be the right temperature for the muffins and were now black. If you've bough a bag of pecans recently, you know why it was such a tragedy to lose a big batch of them. I think Mom was definitely beyond frazzled at this point. Sadly, the second batch of pecan pie muffins also turned out looking like something was wrong. Cue the violin playing now. My mom tried a few days later to make a THIRD batch of the muffins and they still messed up! I think she just gave up at that point!

Obviously, I won't be sharing the recipe with you for the muffins :) Despite a few candy making set backs, we had a great day and I'm already hoping that it works out again next year. Thanks for such a wonderful memories Bami!