Candy Secrets

We found, for instance, that butter crunch won't separate if it's cooked in a heavy skillet instead of a saucepan.

That caramels can be made by a new method which cuts the cooking time as much as 2-1/2 hours.

That even chocolate dipping, admittedly the fussiest of candymaking processes, is easy to conquer when you recognize that chocolate demands certain conditions and won't behave, otherwise.

Sugar itself, though not as cranky as chocolate, follows the rules of its own chemistry and does not take kindly to attempts to change those rules.

The special value of these candy recipes is that, whether they're old standard recipes or new ones we created, they are fresh enough to us so that we take nothing for granted - so often the case when you've made a recipe for years on end and forgotten the difficulties you encountered the first time you made it.

On the other hand, in talking to candy enthusiasts who were always ready to test our samples we dis­covered that the candy considered best by the ex­perts is not always so regarded by their public.

Al­most everyone has tried his hand at making chocolate fudge, and nothing in the world has ever tasted so good as that fudge you whipped up just because you wanted something sweet and lovely.

Purists say that fudge of yours was probably pretty poor stuff and all modern cookbooks have recipes that correct its bad features. By the new methods you can produce a delicious soft creamy fudge, of the consistency of fondant but not at all like the hard and grainy stuff you made in mother's kitchen or over the spirit lamp at college.

Yet, it's not the expert's creamy fudge that many of us want at all, but the kind of fudge that tastes like home and childhood - and since many have now lost the knack of making "bad" fudge we include in this book directions for making both creamy fudge and old-fashioned "amateur" fudge.

Wonderful...

From the big book of Bon Bon Recipes.