SANTA HATS

Caro has already made I-Don’t-Know-How-Much candy and baked goods---all sorts of barks---with whole almonds, poured onto the platter with my mistakenly saying,“Whose plateful of Northern Beans is this?”  There are also other batches snugged into two high stacks of long Glad Boxes---with crushed Oreos, with crushed Nutter Butters, with crumbs of peppermint pinkening the entire puddle.

She’s made Heath bar and chocolate chip and one batch with Heath-chips-and-mini-M&M’s gaudifying the whole top of the chocolate pool, like every child’s candiest dreams. There are great pans of seven-layer bars and dozens of pretty candy-papers holding coconut haystacks.   I think I remember one big pan of a kid-version of Rocky Road, with only the marshmallows.

She’s stood in that kitchen for hours, and as soon as I make these three five-pound batches of fudge, we hope to be boxing and sending a sample of all the goodies to all the chillun around the country.  Plus, we're having a very small tea party/cookie exchange on Sunday afternoon.

Somewhere in all that great counterful of sweetness are five gallon-Ziplocs of “Crack”---the Chex/pretzel/peanut/M&M’s  dipped into white or dark chocolate and broken apart into the munchiest, cravingest stuff to come out of Candyland.   I’d suggested the addition of Bugles this year, thinking they’d look enough like little elf-hats  mingling into the mix, but she’d seen these little cuties online, and this is what I woke to this morning:

She had held them by the sharp tip, dipped them into red Wilton Candy-Melts, then dipped the little damp horn-bell into the tee-nineciest sand-sized nonpareil dust.    She laid them onto parchment, where a lot of them would balance on the open ends.   When they were dry, she held them by the fluff-ends, dipped the sharp ever-so-slightly into the red melt, then pressed a little marshmallow onto the end.

I have no idea what they’re destined for, but our tea party/cookie exchange on Sunday will feature some peeking out from the candy trays, I’m sure, and our little ones will receive the fairy-size little morsels in their packages.   They'll surely marvel and admire---for a brief moment at least, I imagine, before they munch.

I certainly admired and oohed and aahed, and though she hates the cutesy-poo word, I teased her by uttering an under-my-breath  “squeee!” as I left the room.   

I wish you could each and every one join us for Tea on Sunday!