Scotch Kisses....

My Strong Silent Mysterious Man got a new assignment at church to teach a class of men every 4th Sunday. It will be challenging, but he wasn't worried about it too much. He just gives me MY assignment to support him, and that is to make candy once a month for him to give out in class.

Apparently the teacher before him brought in his wife's (now very famous, I am not even attempting to duplicate her recipe) fudge! So now these men are conditioned and they won't stay awake in class without this boost of sugar. NO PRESSURE!!

This week, before my family comes to town, before graduation where I am making desserts and salads to take to parties and cooking and baking and cleaning and already have a very busy schedule... this week instead of telling my strong silent mysterious man NO... I instead decide to do the opposite and take it up a notch.

I am not just going to make candy for him to take, I get it into my little head I will play super wife and make his FAVORITE candy. So I go searching and find a recipe online for See's Scotch Kisses. (somehow those emails from See's have gotten into my head and corrupted me in a way I could have never imagined). I find it!

So yesterday I decide while I am home doing laundry and cleaning getting all of that work done on Thursday, so I can get all my cooking and baking done on Friday... that I can fit in candy making (I know, should have been a red flag somewhere, but NO).

Just 3 ingredients, how hard could it be? Right?

I make it through the painstaking process of getting everything to the exact temperatures... it's a process, but if you don't do that right you can blow the whole recipe!

Then the labor intensive process of cutting sticky marshmallows and hand dipping them into the butterscotch. Messy, sticky, yes but I managed to do that without burning ALL of the skin off my fingers and tongue (because any good cook knows that when you get something hot on your finger, you cool it off my sticking it in your mouth, which then surprises the heck out of you when you scourch the skin on your tongue... and you never ever learn from it, this could happen possibly 2 or 3 times during one candy making batch).

Check, so this isn't so bad after all.

Except when the recipe says it makes 100 and I only get 50? And I hadn't really factored in that I was making my husbands FAVORITE candy on a Thursday thinking they would last until Sunday. Hmmmm? Some red flags begin to go off, but I am almost done (so I thought) and I can't stop now. I finished folding some laundry and wiping dog paws because they chose today to run in and out and the ground was wet outside, so I have to wipe feet every single time they come back in. 4 paws times 3 dogs, well you do the math, but that is allot of paws. I did find a cool secret that works well though and put an old sock over my hand and I can grab a paw and wipe all in one swoop, so it makes it pretty fast.

In the meantime, the teenager comes home and asks if he can eat one?

NOOOOO!!! What is he thinking? That this week is all about HIM, or what???

More big red flags go off that I am painfully making this candy for a bunch of ment I barely know while my only Son is at the crossroads of a very big milestone in his life!) Yes, I get it now, but it's too late, the candy is almost done!

But it reminds me to get them wrapped fast, and put them away so they don't get eaten before Sunday (another very labor intensive process); and they are stuck! Every single last one of them, stuck, they won't come up without all the paper sticking to them. Drat!!

Idea! (insert light bulb moment here) Stick them in the freezer!

So while they are in the freezer, I need a moment to cool down too. The teenager wants to get an icee and watch episodes of The Office on Hulu. So instead of cleaning my house or losing yet another moment with him. I stop everything and we do just that! It was the best part if my day and I can't stand The Office. But it makes him belly laugh outloud and that was my reward, I love watching him laugh! It was awesome moments to cherish!!

And a bonus when I checked on the scotch kisses in the freezer, it worked! They pulled right off that paper, what a neat trick. So I got them all released and in a bowl and I would them wrap them individually... but first back to the teenager, one more episode. When the phone rings... the missionaries don't have dinner tonight. Of course I will feed them! I never ever ever pass up a moment to feed the missionaries... and I bet the teenager will help me. He loves the missionaries!!

We go in to put that dreaded candy away, only to find "the bowl" I had put them in for safe keeping was sitting out at room temperature... and yep, you guessed it, they had all melded together! I must have skipped that day when they taught that lesson in science class or something! Maybe these scotch kisses just weren't meant to be?

Well if it worked one time, maybe it would work again... the bowl, back in the freezer!
Dinner cooking (I do everything better under pressure anyway), check.
I pull the bowl out of the freezer and begin to pop them apart, IT WORKS!! YAY!! I got them wrapped up and put away. I gave one to my strong silent mysterious man when he got home from work, and didn't share with him any of the details of the process (he says I can't make a long story short... and I am not giving him any fuel for that fire!).

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He loved them! And he was so excited to share them, he offered some to the missionaries for dessert after dinner. And they were a BIG HIT, they will for sure like them in the Elders Quorum on Sunday! "But are you going to have some more, there really isn't enough here for everyone"? :) No problem, Honey!

Ahhhhh! I gotta go, I hear a squirrel scurrying across my roof top... another story for another day!