“Fried Oysters” Candy
Recipe from mid-1930’s (my Mom’s Junior High Home Economics’ recipe from Appleton WI.)
This is revised for modern methods---food processor vs. food grinder, instant potatoes vs. boiled, microwave melted chocolate vs. double boiler use.
Ginny (my Mom) wouldn’t give this or her caramel recipe out until two years ago. She’s 88 years young in 2010!
Potato, 1 cup flakes approximately
Water, 1-1/4 cups, boiling
Salt, pinch
Sugar, powdered, 1-1/2 pounds to 2 pounds plus sugar to ‘flour’ board
Peanuts, salted, 1 pound without shells and skins (Virginia are best?)
Chocolate, semi-sweet (or milk chocolate), chips, 8-10 ounces
Make mashed potatoes by combining first three ingredients. Add additional flakes or buds to approximate typical mashed consistency if necessary. Cool.
Add 1-1/2 pounds powdered sugar. Stir until as it’s as stiff as you can manage, adding powdered sugar if needed.
When you can no longer stir successfully, turn out on to a surface that was been ‘floured’ with powdered sugar.
Knead, adding powdered sugar as required obtaining a consistency compatible with making malt ball size balls that are pretty much able to retain their shape. (The bottom may become slightly flat after you have made each ball---that’s OK.) Make these balls and harden an hour or so until the surface of the ball has hardened a bit.
Use a food processor to chop peanuts to a quite coarse grain. You should probably do this in a few batches, depending on the size of your food processor. The original recipe called for a food grinder, medium grind die. The final appearance you are looking for is similar to bacon bits---I don’t know quite how else to describe this. Of course, with using the food processor you will have a range of sizes of these bits. I guess it could be said that you would be trying to maximize the amount of peanut bits that would stick to melted chocolate to cover the ball, large and small bits alike
.
Dip balls into melted semi-sweet chocolate after using package directions for melting the chips in your microwave. (You can use a metal bowl over a saucepan with simmering water to create double boiler effect to melt chocolate rather than microwave use if you prefer. And use bulk chocolate that you have broken up a bit in place of chips if you like.)
Immediately roll the balls over a plate of your coarse ground peanuts. Kids love to do this step and are very good at it! Give them a fork to roll the candy center back and forth over the peanuts until they look ‘right’ (i.e. have picked up probably all the nuts they will) and place them on wax paper, a cookie sheet or the like.
You are are ready to go---eat away!