Turtles

These lovelies were a gift to my mother this year for Mother's Day.  She loves Turtles and I had never made any before so I thought I would give it a shot in honor of her.  I got the book Field Guide to Candy a couple of months ago, but had not had a lot of opportunity to make too many things out of it.  Candy is a whole different ballgame it seems, a more exact science than just yeast, flour, and water.  However, the Field Guide to Candy had great directions and these turtles came together quite easily.

They are a basic hard ball stage caramel dropped over whole peacans placed in the shape of a turtle.  The caramel is allowed to harden and then the whole thing is dipped in chocolate.  I fear tempering chocolate, and instead took the easy way out, Wilton Candy Melts.  Candy melts are easy to use and give you the firm coating that using chocolate chips lacks.  Someday I will venture into tempering chocolate, but this was not that day.

The only complaint that I had was that possibly the caramel was too hard.  It was a very chewy caramel.  It is likely that I cooked it a bit to long, however, everyone who ate them really enjoyed them.  Perhaps next time I will experiment with a softer caramel.