Not quite Willie Wonka...

I may have gone just a teensy bit overboard with my Christmas gifts this year. It’s my tradition to make candy of various sorts; in recent years that’s been limited to fudge, toffee and a couple of types of spiced pecans. This year…

Since I started last Saturday, here’s what I’ve produced:

Toffee—five batches

Fudge—one batch

Garam Masala pecans—three batches

Spiced pecans—four batches

Caramelized chocolate almonds—one batch

Peppermint bark—one batch

Coconut bark—one batch

Truffles—one batch

I’m not exactly sure what happened; like Topsy, it just…growed.

Roughly I’ve used about nine pounds of chocolate, six pounds of sugar, seven pounds of pecans, one pound of walnuts and varying amounts of ancillary stuff. I was already sick of chocolate after the second batch of toffee—I don’t know how I do it, but I get that stuff on every surface of my kitchen and my person and it just becomes revolting.

For the past week, I swear I've become an Oompa-Loompa Lady Macbeth, continually washing chocolate off my hands.

I’m not showing you any photos of my kitchen. I’m never going to win housekeeper of the year awards, but this is seriously beyond the beyond. I actually decided to stop making candy today because I cannot bear the floor any more. (And there’s not much point in mopping while you’re still in production, because the instant you start on the next recipe, you’re crunching sugar and dribbling chocolate over everything.) I've run the dishwasher every single day and lost count of the number of times I've washed the stove top. 

Why? Two words: burnt sugar.

While making those almonds I realized that I was using four bowls and three pans. It was like putting on Thanksgiving dinner, for heaven’s sake.

So, I collected it all and looked at it…and realized I’m made all this stuff for nine people. I, uh, I kind of overproduced. Well, it's not the wildest I've ever got; that would be the year I made 17 kinds of candy for 21 people. That was either the acme or the nadir. Either way, I don't like to think about it.

(Here’s the irony: I started making candy because I calculated that Christmas cookies were too labor intensive. Ha, ha, ha.)

It'll take me a couple of days to package all this stuff up in the little cellophane bags, and then I can bring out the vac and the mop.

Well—I suppose my friends will appreciate it. I know I’ll appreciate having my kitchen back.