Candy & Sweets

Hey, y'all. I'm Paula Deen

Now, y'all hold on to your sweet tooth, grab your candy jar, and forget about counting those carbs

because today we're sweetening the pot with some of my confectionery creations

Now, that's just a fancy way of saying, we're making candy today, y'all

But before we get started, we've got to run down to the primary art supply

It's a neat little shop here in Savannah, and we can pick up some craft materials

to wrap up all our paint-size pleasures. Then we're going to head back to my kitchen

where I'm going to be rolling out my chocolate almond coconut balls

that are melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Now, candy is dandy, but if you really want to tempt my sweet tooth

it's got to be chocolate. So it's my old-timey chocolate fudge that's next

And if that's not enough to keep you sticking around, then my pecan praline morsels are sure to win you over

And last, but certainly not least, it's my butternut fingers that are a twist on an old traditional treat

So y'all don't go away and miss all the fun, because we're dining on dessert all day at my house

Guess what time it is, boys and girls

It's candy time. And whether it's Valentine's, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas

not only is it fun to eat and make these, it's fun to dress them up

So that's what we're going to be doing today. Y'all come along with me because it's candy time

You know, we're very lucky here in Savannah because we're the home of SCAD

Savannah College of Art and Design, so we have some great art supply stores

Well, right now, I'm in Primary Art Supply, and they have some neat things

Look, this looks like a little pie server. Why would an artist need that

And look at this. The perfect mayonnaise spreader. So I'm just kind of enjoying browsing

In fact, on this one little rack, you've got your gift bags. So everything you need is right here, except for the gift

And I'm going to take care of that one. These will be great to wrap our candies in

Oh, my goodness. and my lips. I just adore making candies

I just love it. So I'm going to share the almond coconut balls with you first

Now I've got two boxes of confectionate sugar, and I'm going to add one stick of a really softened butter

I'm gonna add one can of sweetened condensed milk. Now I'm gonna put a teaspoon of almond flavoring

a bag of sweetened flake coconut, and I'm gonna finish this off

with a cup and a half of chopped almonds. Your hands, kids, kinda look like the abominable snowman

when you pull them out. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! All right, and see how quickly we've gotten that together

It doesn't take long at all. Okay, got to do a quick wash up

I've got me a cookie sheet ready here. And y'all will notice that these are no-cooked candies

Now this is the boring part, making balls. So you might want to whistle in for the family

Because before you know it, you get to talking and chatting and laughing and having a good time

and all the balls are done. I'm bored already, because I got some ready in the refrigerator

so there ain't no sense in me doing this, is it? All right

Here's our chilled balls. Now, I'm going to take chocolate chips. Now you can use semi-sweet or unsweet

All right, I'm going to use a half a bar of paraffin wax

and that's wax that you use to, like, make your jellies and jams with

And this is going to make the chocolate stick to our candy. So I'm just going to melt that over some boiling water

It going to make our balls real real shiny and pretty Way to go Paula All right Now we going to take our candy We going to stick a skewer into it You can use a toothpick but I found

that the skewers are heavier and it just works better. So we're just going to run them around

in there. Using another stick, I'm going to push that off and just cover that hole. Pretty

neat little trick, isn't it? So we're going to do that same thing again. Perfect. All right

I tell y'all something, this has made me so hungry. I've got some in the refrigerator

that's already set, cause you can leave these out on the counter

or you can put them in the refrigerator. Well, I wanna rush it along, so I put mine in the refrigerator

So why don't we stop and have a little bite of candy

And then I'll come back and do these while we're on break. How good these look and they've hardened up

Now these candies are good at any holiday. Look at those chocolates

Y'all stick around, because when we come back, I'm going to be making old-timey fudge

like I used to make years ago, and pecan praline morsels. All right, I'm gathering up the last of the things

that I'm going to need to make two of my candies that I love so very much

But let's get started with our old-timey fudge right now. And I'm going to put three cups of sugar

and a cup of evaporated milk. I'm going to put that on this side

And then over here, I'm going to put our cocoa. and we're just going to incorporate that real good

until our sugar has dissolved and our cocoa is well blended in there

All right, now I'm going to stir in about three tablespoons of a white corn syrup

and this is going to make our candy just come all together

Like I said, you just want to make sure you have a good thermometer that you can read

Some of them today, they're hard to read. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and clip this onto our pot

Yeah, we're just 150 degrees right now, so we're going to just let that cook over kind of medium heat

So we'll want to keep a close eye on our thermometer. All right, now over here, we're going to move on to our pecan praline morsels

I've got my two cups of pecans here, and I've got a half a cup of light brown sugar and a half a cup of heavy cream

The brown sugar and the heavy cream are going to give it kind of a praline coating on these pecans, and they're just going to be so good

Now we're going to put these on our pan. We're going to put them in a 350 preheated oven, and we're going to let them bake for about 20 minutes

After about 10 minutes, I'm gonna go to the oven and stir them, because you have to be very, very careful

with nuts, because if they burn, which they will burn easily, there's just nothing you can do

to get that burn taste out of them. All right, so we're gonna give our pan a squirt

All right, we're gonna dump these onto our cookie sheet. All right

So let's get these in the oven. because I've got to give my attention back to that fudge

All right. Ten minutes will give those a quick little turn to just make sure they're not burning

It's right there, y'all, around 234, 235. If this thermometer is reading properly

All right. I'm going to take that out, And I'm going to add six tablespoons of butter

May have been seven tablespoons I added. I can't tell. All right, we're going to add about a teaspoon and a half of vanilla flavoring

and a cup of chopped nuts, or about a cup and a half

I like to add the pecan to it, but you can do walnuts, macadamia nuts

All right we got our dish nice and buttered Now we just going to stir this I think to save some wear and tear on my arm

I think I'm going to do this with an electric mixer, just a little hand mixer

We're going to bead it until it's not quite so shiny. We want to work quickly from this point

And it looks very good, y'all. Let's get this into our buttered dish before it gets too hard

Let it cool for a few minutes, and then I'm going to score it and cut it

I think we have created a wonderful pan of old-timey fudge. I've got to run over here and check on these pecans

because I know it's been 10 minutes, and we need to turn them

and toss them around. Let's see what we've got. Yeah, those look pretty good

Just gonna give them a quick toss. All right, now we're gonna stick those in

for about ten more minutes. Now when we come back, I'm gonna be making buttery nut fingers

So y'all don't go anywhere. Cause we got some more good sweet things coming up

See ya in a couple. All right, I want to get my spoon out because I know I'm going to need it in a minute

But in the meantime, we've got to check on our pecans. All right

Those look delicious, don't they? All right, and let's... Ooh, it's hot

Let's get them up and get them in our bowl, because we don't want to keep these on that hot cookie sheet

because they will continue to cook. I don't know what happened to all my little spatulas

but this one's working out good. In fact, I'm really starting to get attached to it. Perfect

All right, now I'm gonna move this because we're fixing to move on to an old standard

of cookie. Now this particular recipe that I used was my grandmother Paul's, and grandma made hers

in balls. Well, and sometimes I do them that way too, but over the years I just started making them

in fingers. In the meantime, I've got 2 1⁄2 cups of plain flour

or all-purpose flour, 3 quarters of a cup of granulated sugar, and we're just going to mix those two ingredients together

This cookie is very, very easy, but it does take a while because they have to bake

for about 20 or 25 minutes, which is, what, about 15 minutes longer than a normal cookie

Whoops! Pillsbury dough girl. All right, now I'm going to start this off

by using a wooden spoon to just kind of cut that butter in there a little

All right, now I'm going to put in some vanilla flavoring. And if you wanted to kind of shake your flavoring up, you could do, gosh, just about any kind of flavoring you want to

Orange flavoring would be nice. Almond would be delicious in there. All right, now I'm going to add our chopped pecans

And you can see how quickly me getting my hands in here is coming together

I still think that some of my best utensils are the ones that God gave me

These two hands right here, they make great spoons and mixers. So like I said, my grandmother Paul used to roll these into balls, but I'm going to roll

mine into fingers. And I just remembered our oven is on 350 from our pecans so I'm gonna reach over

here and turn that to 325 and if my hands are not too greasy I'm just gonna fan it to cool it down

for a minute because we're ready to put these in the oven. All right so here we go into the oven

Okay, so we got those in the oven, but I've got dough all over my hands

so I'm going to give a quick rinse. I love raw cookie dough

but I don't want to mix it in with my fudge, so I do want to get rid of that

All right. Now I think this is probably my favorite time right now

I get to cut into my fudge. And let see how it does Oh and look y Look down here at my side She enjoying this unusually cool but wonderful day we having

It's made all the dogs sleepy, including this dog. I could take a nap, too

Look at this wonderful fudge. Oh, my goodness. This brings back so many memories

Oh. It could not be any more perfect. It is just hard to beat the old-timey cooked fudge

Mmm. Just can't hardly wait. Not that this fudge needs it. Not at all

But I just want to garnish the plate a little bit. So I'm just gonna dust it with a little cocoa

And just to make sure I do have enough nuts on it, I'm just gonna sprinkle it with a few extra

cause I can always take my piece of fudge and dunk in there like that and get me a few more nuts

Mmm. This is so good, it's kinda got me dewy-eyed. I'm lost in it

But, if I don't work my way out of this, we're going to have burned, if I can say it

we're going to have burned, buttery fingers. So, let's go over here and check

You can see how they swelled up a little. Those are perfect

Just barely a light brown. Let's see if I can. All right

Now we're just gonna toss these in our powdered sugar while they're warm

And look, it's sticking so nicely. And I've got me a plate

And when we come back, I'm gonna show you some tips on how to wrap all these wonderful

little goodies up. I want to share a few tips with y'all on packaging your candy now that we've got it all made

You can take tissue papers, and it's very, very pretty to take two different kinds of

tissue paper and offset one of them. Pile your candy in the center, as much as you want

to give, and then pull up the corners like so and tie them up with a pretty ribbon

And you've got a perfect container

And you can also buy little colored sacks. You can get your corresponding colors and write a message on them

Just like this. And our pecans will go nicely in these sacks

Because it kind of looks like a little peanut sack anyway. And we'll just tie those up with a pretty ribbon

You can use Halloween colors. And look how cute that is. A great little hand out for the children at Halloween

So if you don't have time to make your candy, don't fret over it

feel guilty, don't feel bad. You can go to the grocery store or the candy store and find all

kind of beautiful candy in all different colors and you can package them in a clear bag and put

the ribbon that matches the occasion on them. It's going to make your candy giving so easy

Boys and girls, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles

Whatever you're making of these dishes, the butternut fingers, the chocolate almond coconut balls, the pecan praline morsels, or old-timey, old-fashioned fudge

Whether you want to pass these out at holiday time, or you just want to have them around your house for your family and friends when they drop in, you're going to find that they're all easy, delicious recipes

So until next time, America, I want to send y'all best dishes from my sweet tooth to yours