It’s Christmas Eve!

Are you guys all ready? Everything wrapped? Shopping done?

If not, it’s ok, roll with it. It’s supposed to me a happy time, not to be stressful.

Like me, I still have baking to do, prepping dinner and putting out gifts. Does it bother me? Nope. I also have Holly Days to write on! Which brings us to day 15!

In one of my favorite past times, I was watching travel network again, and I forget the name of the show, street treats, I think. Anyhow, I was watching an episode that was filming in the middle east. Now, we here at a shot of common sense have a million different backgrounds, and we are identifying each one of them, including Judaism. I haven’t really fully embraced it, but the studying of the foods interested me. I saw a dessert or candy, depending on who you talk to, called Halvah.

It started in India, and has taken on different forms as it was adapted by different middle eastern cultures. I gravitated to the Jewish version of the dish. When reading on it, it seems like it would be hard to make, and difficult to find the ingredients. Once I wrote things down, it actually wasn’t hard to find at all. These were ingredients that I saw in my grocery store but never paid attention to.

One of the main ingredients is sesame tahini. Never heard of it before, but it’s a paste. The ingredients includes that, honey, and nuts. You can add things to it to make the flavor different, like I did. You guys know me, I take things and change them to either be kid friendly, or to serve at a grown up dinner party or some thing. LOL.

I made a Snickers Halvah. We layered the dish. One layer is milk chocolate. I melted mini chocolate chips. I measured wax paper, and greased the wax paper and put into a smaller glass pan. Once we had that spread on the bottom of the pan, I heated my honey, walnuts, caramel, and butterscotch chips in a pot. I then fold the paste into the hot honey mix. I poured that on top of the honey.

The kicker to this candy is it take a while to actually make. Your job is done after this. It has to sit in the refrigerator for at least 3 days. I got it done today, and if may not done by Christmas, but I can have it for New Years with a glass of milk or wine since I’m grown and I can.

It really wasn’t a hard thing to make. I recommend you invest in a candy thermometer due to heating the honey, it has to be to a certain temp to fold in the paste and add the extras you choose(240 degrees). It’s called the soft ball stage. Not boiling. That’s too hot. Again, it’s easy to make, but takes time to actually be ready.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

~CSM~