Friday, December 17, 2010

scrumptious peanut clusters


Last week I pieced together something which turned out to be the best experiment I've had in a long time. The chocolate-covered candy I made last year was good, but it seemed to be missing some vital element. Therefore, I went digging...and determined that the lacking note was a little thing called butterscotch.

I preferred to not use packaged butterscotch chips, so I poked around some more, and came up with a recipe for butterscotch sauce. It called for brown sugar, butter, heavy cream, vanilla, and salt. I've found that Rapadura and Sucanat are excellent substitutes for brown sugar, so I decided to go for it. I used Sucanat which I had powdered for a few minutes in my food processor.

The butterscotch sauce turned out beautifully! As for the chocolate, I followed Kimi's recipe for a wonderful honey-sweetened, dark chocolate coating. As soon as the chocolate was ready, I mixed in my butterscotch sauce. I then stirred in the peanuts, and dropped them in clusters onto waxed paper, and chill. So easy!

And so delicious. They turned out far better than I ever imagined. Now, the only challenge will be making them last until our guests arrive next week!

I didn't measure all the amounts, but this is approximately what I used:

10 oz chocolate sauce
8-10 oz butterscotch sauce
3 cups peanuts

I will absolutely be making these again. Definitely homemade Christmas candy at its best!

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