This is a short story of how 2011 me gives 2015 me a cooking lesson.
A fond high school occasion was making pulled butter mints with my good friend Sandy Winfrey. Her mother always did the cooking part and timed it so that when we arrived from school the candy was ready for pulling. We were willing kitchen maids and went after the task with great anticipation. Those mints never disappointed. Even if we were too slow and the entire mass hardened into one giant mint before our eyes we ate it anyway.
Decades later I wanted to make my own batch of mints and so contacted the source. Never mind that we had not talked for years and years. Becky Winfrey was spot on with her recipe and I was a happy cook.
This year I searched for my notes about her process but could not locate them and so did what we all do, turned to google for help. I found a couple of recipes that sounded right. The recipe is easy enough. It’s the execution that’s tricky. These sources were reliable, one even hailing from Winston Salem where Becky was from and probably where she learned her pulled mints secrets.
I cooked a couple of batches but something was not right. They turned out okay but there was too much handling of hot candy and the aging process was not minutes but days. I returned to google and decided to look for a video. I needed to see the process first hand.
Surprisingly I only found a couple of videos (I mean more times than not there are endless videos for any and everything). Even more surprising was leading the tiny pack was my own video I had made the year I decided to make a vlog entry every day of advent reading a page of the advent story the guys created when they were youngsters. I included something Christmasy to round out the short clips.
As I watched myself make the mints I patted myself on the back for such foresight. Mints, you’re mine now.
