Easy Turtles- a lesson from grandma

Last fall my family cleared out my grandmother's house. As she took up permanent residence in a nursing home, piles of things shifted from forgotten closets to neat boxes of mystery in spare bedrooms. One such box, or perhaps boxes, included cookbooks and old recipe cards.

This is what I bring to you now.

A stained and worn series of found cards and my experience cooking from them. Some are things that I don't dare to make at this moment or without a small army present, others will include different adventures. With any luck, I will attempt to weave in parts of stories that make these card make more sense than the mundane. Perhaps these recipes or my revisions will be useful to you in other ways. A gift from my family recipe box to yours.

Up first: Easy Turtles.

In short, my fathers (and my) favorite kind of candy: Anything caramel, nuts, and chocolate. This card is likely far older than either one of us and I'll be honest about my shopping list. Namely:
What is Parfin? Parafin?

Either way, I can't find it in my grocery store. This in itself is not that surprising, there are many things I struggle to find at my local grocery store.

I think it's like almond bark, but I didn't buy it and I didn't use it. Here's how it actually went.

28 caramels. That's most of a bag other than the few I snuck. Well, the recipe calls for 28 caramels, I used the whole bag. That's more than 28 caramels. You can do math. The math works like this: do you want more caramely goodness or less.

Double boiler that stuff and put some evaporated milk in there too. I once struggled to find that ingredient in the same grocery store. 

It should get goopy and delicious. Stir in 2 cups. Make that a cup and some of some kind of nut. Walnuts were cheaper, I picked those. Live your own dreams. The handy 1950s recipe card suggests to drop these on wax paper and "cool". This is messy and sticky, and not glamorous, but here it is. They look like little mangled blobs, but they have to be good right?

 

Cool. Sounds easy. I live in Satan's outcasted hell-scape. Cool is something that happens in uncontrollable air conditioning and only as a shock factor to the heat exhaustion from being outside. And because this is wax paper it should just peel up, no problem. 

Except that's not how the real world works. These things never work out just as planned. So this is a mess. Perhaps a stint in the fridge will make things better. 

That's also my approach to Arizona summer. A brief stint in the fridge. 

Well, that only left scraps of wax paper on the bottom. That means these treats have extra fiber. It's good for you. 

Ok into the freezer. 

In the mean time, here's some chocolate. Just a big bowl of it, without the para-whatever. Microwave that. Add some heavy whipping cream. That's probably like parasailstuff anyway. It should be a liquid. Do that. 

Good news, the freezer trick worked better. It'll be a nice surprise to find out which ones have grafts of wax paper tucked away inside. A quick dip into the bowl of melted chocolate and to the newly revised parchment paper rendition and we have this:

There's only one problem. What to do with the remaining half a bowl of delicious melted chocolate. To waste perfectly good chocolate is a cardinal sin, punishable by well, being in Arizona- Satan's playground. 

There's always hope. Because it's strawberry season. 

And once those are cold, I'm going to devour an inappropriate amount of sugar, and pass out on my living room floor.  

Just like grandma would have wanted.