Kevin' Bootleg Peppermint Patties

When I first blended belongings with the woman who is now my wife, I found myself surrounded by new kitchen toys I had never before played with. I'm talking about a vegetable peeler, an apple corer, a basting brush, a nice mixer, a cheese grater, parchment paper, and cutting boards just to name a few. In return she got a collection of 1980s Smurf figurines and a tattered chair from Rooms to Go. Isn't cohabitation grand?

With all these new accouterments I took to baking. I especially enjoy making cookies or cakes or pies or brownies or any other confection that I can polish off while sitting on the couch and watching the Tyra show. Just kidding. I hate that show, but I could maybe turn the sound down and still eat the cookies. She is kinda hot. And Kevvie Monster loves cookies.

My mother made candy when I was growing up, but for the most part my family was not a baking family. I do recall my sister baking once when she was about six. Of course, this would have been when she made a yellow cake in her EasyBake oven, which incidentally ran off a regular light bulb as best as I can remember. I think she was nine by the time it was finished cooking.

Yesterday I popped into my parents' house to see if they had any Crisco. When I told them I found a recipe on joyofbaking.com for peppermint patties, my father said, "Why don't you just go out and buy a bag?" Whatever. That's like telling somebody who likes to fish Why don't you just run out to the Kroger and pick up some fillets? Clearly my father did not know the joy of baking.

My mother thought for a second and then said, "We have some, but it might be kinda old."

"Like how old?" I asked.

"Well, remember when your sister had that EasyBake oven?" she said.

Anyway, I trekked to Kroger to get a new can of Crisco.

I have mixed success with recipes I get off the internet. All too often I find a recipe that for the necessary ingredients might list only flour, eggs, sugar and butter and then go on to say in the directions Now gradually fold in the creme fraiche and the pumpkin puree. Where do these mystery ingredients come from?

Other times the person submitting the recipe has the math skills of a three-year-old. If the recipe calls for one cup of sugar, the directions will say to use half the sugar for the dough, half for the filling and then sprinkle the remaining three tablespoons over the dessert before putting it in the oven. Unfortunately I never discover these discrepancies until I'm elbow-deep in flour and egg white so I spend the next hour trying to look up alternative formulas on the internet to figure out what the correct ingredients and proportions are. Very frustrated.

Also sometimes people who upload recipes to the internet do so hoping when you read the ingredients you'll be impressed with the contents of their pantry. If you've ever pulled up recipes online you know what I'm talking about. Knowing full well you don't keep this stuff in your kitchen, they'll list obscure ingredients just hoping you'll run out to a specialty store and buy them. I'm not going to drive out of my way and spend half my paycheck so I can get olallieberry extract or flaxseed paste, much less ask the guy at the meat counter if he can special order for me some eye of newt. That's just plain dumb.

Another problem I face when making food -- something I have no one but myself to blame for -- is that I either toss the recipe or file it away in some place I can never find it. My wife is good about keeping track of what cookbook a particular recipe is in or where she wrote it down on a recipe card. I'm just not good at that, so I've decided when I make something that tastes half-way decent I'm going to post it here. I don't care if you make it, but this way it'll be easy for me to find the secret formula when it comes time to whip up another confection.

So to start, here's my doctored up recipe for the joyofbaking.com's peppermint patties. I call them Kevin's Bootleg Peppermint Patties. Let it be said that I fully believe you should never follow a recipe exactly as it's written, so in the event you do make these, don't be afraid to substitute ingredients, use different amounts of something or whatever.

You need:

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons soft butter (salted or un- doesn't matter)

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (the joyofbaking recipe says you should use peppermint oil instead but readily admits that it can't be found in a grocery store -- Again, no thank you pretentious ingredients.)

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons evaporated milk (if you don't have it, just simmer two cups milk over low heat until it reduces to one cup and use three tablespoons of that.)

a 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate (or dark or milk or bitter or whatever)

one tablespoon of shortening

Mix together the powdered sugar, the butter, the vanilla extract, the peppermint extract and the evaporated milk until it forms a moist sticky dough. If it seems too moist to work with, chill it in the fridge for thirty minutes.

Line a cookie sheet (or two) with parchment paper. Again, if you don't have parchment just use aluminum foil, wax paper or the Sports section.

Now pinch off small balls the size of a marble and lay them out on the cookie sheet. I think in my best batch I fit about 60 of those buggers on there. Next flatten them so they're about the same circumference and thickness as two quarters stacked on top of each other. Put these in the freezer to chill for an hour or so.

Melt the chocolate and shortening in a double boiler over low to medium heat. If you're the type that likes to live on the edge, you can melt chocolate in a microwave but I don't advise you put it in there for more than twenty seconds at a time before stirring. Once you burn chocolate the entire batch of it is ruined.

Retrieve the flattened peppermint balls from the freezer and dip them individually into the chocolate making sure they're coated. Use forks to lift them out and put them back on the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Put them back in the freezer for thirty minutes or so to get them to harden and then dip them again in the chocolate. Then put them back in the fridge to set.

These candies freeze well or you can keep them in the fridge. My wife liked them just left out at room temperature.

I joked earlier about eating a whole batch of something during the Tyra show, but if you don't watch it, these could easily be gone by the first commercial break.

Enjoy.