The road to Snickers is paved with nougat

The Daring Bakers' ChallengeThis month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was to make nougat, which isn’t something that I’d ever even thought about making before. I’ve never eaten nougat outside of a candy bar. And I figured this was no time to start, so I decided to make a peanut nougat to go inside a homemade Snickers bar.

I spliced my recipe together from a couple of sources. I used the Bon Appetit ‘Snickers’ bar recipe for the base and the nougat, and I followed the How Sweet It Is homemade Snickers recipe for the caramel layer. I ended up just melting a lot of chocolate chips and, after I got tired of dipping the individual bars, pouring them over the top of the nougat and caramel layers. It wasn’t very pretty, but it tasted marvelous.

The homemade Snickers bars took far more effort than the homemade Butterfingers, but I think they tasted better, too. And I should know, because I ate a ton of them.

Homemade Snickers

The March 2014 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Rebecca of BakeNQuilt. She challenged us to learn to make classic nougat and to make it our own with our choice of flavors and add-ins.

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Rockford’s grandmother started sending me obituaries in 2007. I’d been reading “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries” at her house, and we’d talked about how fascinating those brief biographies could be. She clipped obits from the Washington Post and sent them to me for years after that conversation.

She was thoughtful like that.

She renewed our subscription to Smithsonian magazine every year, and she used to send my sister-in-law $5 at the start of each Vidalia onion season so she could treat herself to a tomato and onion sandwich.

She was whip-smart, she was dignified, and she had impeccable manners. I was intimidated the first time I met her. Not physically — although most of her children and grandchildren are from my vantage point very tall, she didn’t tower over me — but she had a Presence. Being around her felt like what I imagine being around Maya Angelou feels like.

She knew Rockford loved her cinnamon applesauce, so she made sure she always had a fresh batch when he visited. She welcomed most of the staff of our college newspaper into her house one year when we went to D.C. for a conference. She’d stocked the house with all sorts of treats before we arrived.

She was kind and generous like that.

She was a kindergarten teacher. She loved her family fiercely. She loved to read, she was devout and active in her church, and she was always learning new things.

She passed away on Saturday. I’ll miss her.

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