jesSEE'S Candies

Warning: I abuse and overuse parenthesis like mad in the following post.


Every year there is always the gift-giving dilemma: What to give close friends and family. Let's face it, my budget isn't expendable enough to personalize each and every gift, yet I want to pass something along to say, "Hey, I think you're rad!" at Christmastime. I haven't reached the point where I feel it necessary to pass out cutesy generic neighbor gifts to everyone on the block (and apparently no one else in the neighborhood has either ;), so I'm always wracking my brain for new ideas for the 10-or-so people on our "list."

We're not a huge cookie-making family (at least not the variety friends would usually happily receive as a gift ... I mean flax/oatmeal/raisin/carrot/zuchinni/wheat/sugar-free cookies are great and all .... but still ;) so I wanted to find a treat that could be made en masse but also be worthy of it's gift-giving status.

In the end I realized dipped chocolates would be the perfect gift to give. We LOVE (adore, inhale, devour ...) dipped nuts and candies at our house so it would also be a reflection of our family -- plus it was definetly a hubby-friendly endeavor (unlike making cookies ... not exactly a Trent activity).

Once I realized that our name had "SEE'S" in it I knew we had a perfect new holiday tradition.

And so, JESSEE'S CANDIES was born :D (If you've never heard of SEE'S candies then you are obviously not from the west ... but think Godiva and you're on the right track).

We spent the Sunday prior to Christmas melting, stirring, dipping, wrapping and delivering our chocolates and we had SO much fun! Trent loved making the chocolates (and eating them too ) and it was an activity that even Shaylie and Truman could help with.

Hooray for new traditions!

Most of the ingredients ... and consequently the first and last good photo of the day. I wasn't willing to open the door for natural light after freezing my bunnies off taking this one. Expect high-ISO noisy pics from here on out.

Marilee even got in on the action :

Trent felt the need to shove my chocolate-covered whisk in my face. That's love ;)

Some of the chocolates:

These are the peanut butter Ritz crackers. We also made dipped marshmallows, cranberry truffles, cranberry walnut fudge, dipped pretzels, dipped walnut-raisin clusters, dipped dried berries and dipped walnuts.

This is the fudge:

These are the less-than appetizing appearing truffles.

And the end result!