It is my first real day off from the Emmanuel Institute kitchen in a month and what do you suppose I am doing? You guessed it I am cooking! I love to try new things, at Emmanuel we don’t experiment too much…really who wants to mess up lunch for 25 or 30 people. I sure don’t.
I have been working on some projects for our graduation reception, which is just around the corner. I always like to serve something a little fancy for all of the guests. Well, in the process I came across a recipe for a butterfinger candy bar and I go to thinking I sure would like to try that, so I did. The first recipe was didn’t come out crunchy but it tasted good. So I went back to the drawing board today.
I was looking at this recipe. It seemed to me that we were making a simple hard candy and adding it to peanut butter. So I decided to try a very simplified version. I didn’t want to use corn syrup so I decided to try maple syrup…maple hard candy is a common treat. So I used maple syrup with an pinch of Cream of Tartar (check out the cool sight that explains why). I heated to 300 degrees and added it to some crunchy all natural peanut butter. Vola! It is remarkable! It so much like I remember a Butterfinger candy bar and wow it is so easy to make.
Homemade Butterfinger candy!
1 cup pure maple syrup
1/8 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
1 cup natural peanut butter, crunchy or smooth, you choose!
- Pour maple syrup into a small sauce pan.
- Add Cream of Tartar and stir. (no more stirring)
- Bring to boil and continue boiling until you reach the “hard crack” stage about 300 degrees
- Pour into a glass bowl with your peanut butter and stir.
- Spread into a shallow glass dish coated with cooking spray.
- Score into one inch squares with an oiled knife.
- Refrigerate until hard.
It tastes great just like this, but…to make it just like the store bought we need some chocolate. We prefer carob at our house so here is what I did.
1/2 cup peanut butter it the bottom of a glass bowl. Spread it along the sides so that when you put in the 1 1/2 cups of barley malt sweetened carob chips not one of them touches the glass. Microwave for one minute and then stir like crazy. It should become nice and smooth. If you have a few lumps you can put it back in the microwave for 10 seconds, not longer and stir again. Carob burns easily so be careful. Dip your “butterfinger” candies in the carob place on wax paper and allow to cool.
Be careful these are so good you may just want to keep eating them…no one better lay a finger on my butterfinger.