Christmas Treats I Made, 2019

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For the holiday, I sent out care packages to several people I know. I made an old favorite and two new ones. Since I was shipping them, I picked things that I thought would travel well and survive to their destination. I packed them in reusable but disposable plastic containers, and I believe they all arrived in ok shape.

The old favorite was Scotcheroos , a recipe I learned from my wife’s family, years ago and share here. It’s layer of candied rice crispies, covered with a layer of “frosting,” made by melting chocolate and butterscotch morsels together for a couple of minutes in the microwave. Certainly not haute cuisine, but it’s a requirement in her family that when two or more are gathered together, a batch of scotcheroos must be made. Though I was thwarted and couldn’t send out as many as I wanted to. There was a local run on the butterscotch morsels. I went to at least half a dozen grocery stores in a 5 mile radius around my house. And I couldn’t find them anywhere. Ends up, every store I went to had them on sale, and every store was sold out. Either a lot of scotcheroos were being made, or more likely, I suspect, someone in the area bought them all up with the idea of selling them on the internet.

Which led to the next new item … Chocolate Pretzel Morsels . This is something my wife discovered when I made a batch of Scotcheroos and had too much of the frosting left over. Dipping little pretzels in the liquified chocolate and butterscotch morsels and letting the air dry. A nice little holiday hors d’oeuvre. Though, with the shortage of butterscotch morsels this year, I ended up mixing chocolate and peanut butter morsels. Just as good in this case. Maybe even better. Use the pretzels that are 1″ long and thick around as your thumb.

The last item was Paula Deen’s Pecan Praline Morsels . Three ingredients – heavy cream, brown sugar, and pecan halves, roasted in a hot oven until the liquid evaporates. Really easy to make, and really irresistible. I considered adding a bit of cayenne, but my wife nixed the idea. For what it’s worth, a single 2 cup bag of shelled pecan halves cost $8.99 this year.