Every year my family and I make almond roca as gifts for family and friends. Actually, I cook the candy part myself, usually when no one is home or they are still sleeping. If I cook the candy when people are around, I start in an empty kitchen, but like a magnet, everyone is suddenly drawn to the kitchen for a snack.
It makes my heart race and my stomach churn with these extra bodies around while I’m cooking scalding candy. At some point, I must carry the hot pot across the kitchen and pour it into the foil-lined cookie sheets to cool; I would very much like the way to be clear.
When my kids were small, my husband and I made the candy when they were in bed. In college I worked for the Northwest Burn Foundation, I knew mixing hot pots of food with children underfoot was a bad idea. Now that they are too old to put to bed, I have to assume they can take care of themselves. It’s somewhat of a Christmas miracle that no one gets hurt in the process (except for the couple of burns I acquire from oils popping out of the pot).
After the candy cools and hardens, I melt chocolate with coconut oil and my daughters frost both sides, adding chopped walnuts on the outsides. I cut it up and find places to store the batches around the kitchen until the chocolate dries.
After it’s dry, we bag it up to for handing out. I have a running list of recipients, which if I’m particularly together, I actually remember I have so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every year. Still, just because there’s a list, just because I check it twice (in the spirit of Santa), doesn’t mean I remember everyone who should be on the list.
Then there are the wild cards; namely my children and their current spirit-of-giving phase of life. I never know if my kids will give to their teachers until we start packing candy or what friends they’ve acquired and dropped from the list either.
Logically, I should be counting heads before I make the candy, but all the ingredients come out more evenly if I make 8 batches (2 bags of almonds, 2 packs of 4 one-pound butter logs from Costco). Plus, after 8 batches my psyche is just finished making candy; anything more pushes me over the Christmas cheer edge onto the Grinch side.
That’s 24 pounds of candy. That’s enough. We don’t need more friends. So after we packed the candy this year, negotiated who was on the list (Do you really still need that friend? Didn’t that teacher question your reasoning behind your argument on the paper you agonized over? I’m not sure they are candy worthy), I remembered a few more people.
As if I don’t have enough things to wake me up at night, I started realizing I didn’t have enough candy. I awoke to the reorganization in my head: my college daughter won’t see her teachers or friends until after the holiday. I can give away their candy now and make a fresh batch before she goes back to school.
But when I went to sort all the bags of candy, I came out ahead. I rechecked the list, wrote on the boxes, and just puzzled over how we could come out with too much; another batch wasn’t needed. I felt like Jesus feeding 5000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a couple fish.
It’s either a Christmas miracle or we just can’t count!
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is absolutely finished making almond roca for the year. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her websitelivingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.
