Crock Pot Candy

Those of you who know me well, know that I have much love for the wonderful invention we know as a Crock Pot/Slow Cooker…whatever you may prefer to call it.  If you hang around long enough, you’ll see that I use it a lot.  If you are not utilizing one you are missing out on such convenience!  I love putting ingredients in the crock pot and knowing that in most cases I do not have to touch it again until hours later when it has dinner ready for me.  It is especially useful if you are a person who is gone several hours in the day or a busy homeschool momma like me, who is chasing kiddos all day.  With a little organization, you can put everything in your crock before leaving for the day (or before you begin your homeschool day) and then return to a hot, home-cooked meal.  Also love it when I’m cooking for a crowd.  Okay, I’ll stop singing its praises and get on with it.  I’m just always surprised when I run across people who do not have at least one in their kitchen arsenal.  I have a use for at least 3-4.  :)

                During the holidays I do a lot of baking…candy making, etc.  I feel like there are SO many recipes I want to try, and not enough time to try them all.  I also have those tried and true recipes that I return to each year that have become a must for me.  Crock pot candy is one of those.  I make it most often around Christmas and really look forward to it, because believe me when I say it is DELICIOUS!  It is essentially chocolate-covered peanuts, but they will be the best chocolate-covered peanuts you've ever put in your mouth!  :)

                You can gleam from my earlier comments that I use my crock pots a lot so once-in-a-while I wear one out.  Such was the case on Christmas Eve.  I usually put the crock pot candy in my 5 quart slow cooker.  It bit the dust that day.  In its defense, my husband and I received it as a wedding gift, so it was 9 years old.  It saw A LOT of action…. Oh, the meals it saw.  This recipe makes a ton of candy, and I had intended to give most of it away as gifts—but there was a hiccup.

                With my 5 quart crock pot out, I only have my 6 quart left (one of my sisters is borrowing my 3 ½ quart which would not have been big enough anyway).  I put everything in and went about my day.  Realized right before it finished the recipe actually calls for a 4 quart crock… and to my disappointment a lot of the peanuts had burned.  It is recommended that your crock be at least ½ to 2/3 full for optimum results, and it looked okay to me, but maybe the 6 quart was just too big.  The other issue could be…that there have been complaints from other people about my particular crock pot cooking too fast.  Thought that was crazy at first, but now I’m thinking maybe they were right.  I’ve NEVER had something burn in the crock pot until that day!  Don't let that discourage you from a crock pot...like I said, out of hundreds of meals, this is the first time something like this happened to me...and it was probably user-error on my part.  Should have known better.

                So, what do you do when you’re looking at $15-$20 of “ruined” candy?  I knew either way it had to come out of the crock pot so I decided to try to salvage what I could.  I dug out all the blackened peanuts I could get to and stirred it all up, and portioned it out on wax paper as I normally would.  It probably would have been fine to give away, even though you run across the occasional burnt peanut, but I couldn’t bring myself to gift it out.  Instead, I served it to my immediate family lol.  I gave the burnt peanut disclaimer and no one seemed to mind.  See...even with burned peanuts this is still the BEST crock pot candy.  haha

                Here is the recipe I use:

Trisha Yearwood Crock Pot Candy

                As I mentioned before this makes a TON of candy, so be prepared for that.  You could put the candy into cute cupcake liners, but I just put spoonfuls out onto wax paper and let them set up.  Here is what it looked like:

                The recipe says it makes 30-40 pieces but I got much more.  Some of my pieces are smaller, but most are mounded into huge chunks, and I still got 70 pieces of candy out of this! 

                So other than my rare crock pot malfunction this was a success.  Word to the wise—you should always give it a look if you’re able.  The recipe only cooks 3 hours so I should have glanced at it before it was finished.  Upside is, I got my crock pot candy fix, many times over.  What are your go-to convenience recipes?