Homemade Cracker Candy
Christmas is rapidly approaching and many of us either will attend or host a holiday party or prepare the family meal.
Since I was a former confectioner I prepared many different types of homemade candies or snacks for my store. As holiday times rolled around the homemade treats just flew out the door even faster. So I decided to treat you and your guests to some of my most popular recipes.
Some are easy with very little knowledge needed to get good results. Some are a little more difficult but if you follow the directions given you will end up with success.
So here's one that is pretty easy...
Homemade Cracker Candy
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) plus 2 tablespoons REAL butter (the better the quality the better your candy will be)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp real vanilla
Saltine crackers
large chopped pecan pieces (approx 1/2 cup or more if desired)
one bag of mini chocolate chips (approx 12 oz bag or more if desired)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Combine both sticks of butter, the brown sugar and the vanilla in a 2 quart saucepan (it will foam up so be careful and use a deep pan) over low heat until it starts to get hot. Stir occasionally to keep from sticking. This will become your candy coating layer.
- Using the 2 tablespoons of butter, grease the bottom and corners only of a large cookie sheet
- Now fill the large cookie sheet with saltine crackers in a single layer. Break apart crackers and fill in any empty spaces.
- As the candy coating in the pan heats up start stirring this continuously with very slow smooth strokes. Keep stirring until everything is dissolved and the mixture is getting bubbly.
- When bubbly remove from the heat and pour this mixture over the top of the saltine crackers, covering all and be sure the crackers stay in a single layer. Push them back down with a fork if the edges float and are overlapping. Work quickly as your coating is going to harden.
- Place the cookie sheet into the preheated oven and let it bake for ten minutes.
- Remove the tray from the oven. Re-arrange any floating/overlapping crackers back to a single layer.
- Now dribble your chopped pecans all over the hot syrup so there is a little on top of each cracker.
- Dribble the mini chocolate pieces evenly over all of the crackers so there is some on every cracker. Wait approximately 1-2 minutes until chocolate softens then spread it gently with a knife to coat each cracker with melted chocolate.
- Cool completely and then break apart into pieces (about the size of each cracker).
- Store in an airtight container.
Don't let the idea that this is just saltine crackers fool you. When prepared, this is a chocoholics delight!
Comments
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It is a generous person who shares special recipes. Thanks for the great Christmas gift.
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Thank you! This looks very tasty. Always glad to hear from an expert!
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@greyfurball I give this as part of my Christmas gifts to my friends and relatives. It's a real winner.
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Looks dangerously delicious, thanks for the recipe.
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@shllnzl Hope everyone enjoys it.
Just keep in mind the smaller the cookie sheet the deeper the toffee (candy coating) layer will be on the finished candy. And this is one recipe where the coating layer is actually better in a thin band, not great big piles of it. So find the biggest sheet you can if possible. Mine happens to be an 18"X24". You can go smaller OK but it if you are using anything too small just spread this out on two cookie sheets instead.
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