Fruit & Honey Candy

 FRUIT & HONEY CANDY

    Okay, so I found the recipe for this candy tucked into the Laurel (Iowa) Centennial Cookbook (1881-1981).  The Laurel Centennial Cookbook has multiple recipes submitted from members of my family and I inherited this copy by my Aunt this past year. I'm very, proud of the fact that on both sides of my family, I have ancestors who founded or co-founders of towns, so it is cool to have this cookbook from a town which some of my ancestors helped to found. This recipe had been cut out of a magazine in 1989/1990.  I love when I can date clippings that I find tucked into cookbooks and this clipping was for a recipe from Sue Bee Honey and had a coupon for .15 cents off a bottle of Sue Bee Honey.  It expired on 02/28/1990. 

    This isn't something I'd ordinarily make, but I wanted to try my hand at something healthy and something different.  This recipe fit the bill on both fronts.  Reading the recipe, I couldn't figure out what they meant by "fruit bits", so I tweeted the question to Sue Bee Honey (@SueBeeUSA) and they responded pretty quickly.  Some fine person at Sue Bee Honey had actually researched this on my behalf and provided the answer.  That answer was that the Sun-Maid Fruit Company, famous for their raisins (that's how I know them) made/makes a product called "fruit bits".  The fruit bits are exactly what they sound like. Little bits of mixed dried fruits.  I couldn't find any, so that was one of the dried fruits I ordered off of Amazon; I just ended up with a different brand, because I couldn't find the Sun-Maid brand. I also ordered dried apricots, apples and peaches in addition to a large bottle of Sue Bee Honey. The other ingredients are orange extract, quick oats (Um, I just got regular oats and it seemed to work fine) and walnuts.  

    Honestly, this was a little time consuming to make, mostly because the food processor I have is small and I could not fit all of the ingredients in it, so I had to process all the fruits in batches and then I used my really small one to finely chop the walnuts.  I also processed the oats, to make the pieces smaller and I liked how it turned out, with some not all of the pieces totally ground up as I didn't want all of the oats in large pieces.  One slight hiccup which really didn't matter in the end was that the bag of mixed fruit I ordered was large pieces, not bits.  I hadn't realized it, but no biggie. They were going to get chopped up anyhow. I simply cut up those pieces a little smaller, before processing with the other dried fruits. Since my food processor was not large enough to process the "ton" of fruit, nuts and oats, after I processed each smaller batch of mixed fruits, I put the fruit in a large mixing bowl. I mixed the honey and orange extract in the food processor with the fruits.  I hand mixed in the oats and finely chopped walnuts with a wooden spoon, making sure that all the ingredients were incorporated.  The recipe says to process the nuts and some of the walnuts in the food processor, but mixing them in with the wooden spoon, worked just fine. 

    I'd ordered mini-baking cups, so I set out a bunch of those, grabbed my small cookie scoop and started scooping balls.  The recipe only calls for 7oz of walnut pieces, divided, but I used more than the 1 cup you set aside for rolling the balls in. There are so many balls that I had to crush up some more nuts.  You can do this to taste, like I did. I wanted to ensure I had a decent amount of crushed walnuts on the outside of the balls. Using my small cookie scoop was an excellent decision.  It made the perfect size ball. The recipe says the yield is approximately 7 dozen and I made 83/84 balls.  I can't remember if I counted before I sampled one. 

    What did I like about this recipe? I like that it is a healthy recipe with no added sugar besides what is naturally in the honey and dried fruits. I thought it tasted pretty good, considering it's not what I normally would reach for as a treat.  I liked that it is something that I can share with my neighbors & friends who may follow certain food restrictions, specifically no dairy or certain animal products. Would I make this again?  I think so. When after COVID restrictions are lifted and life can get more back to normal, I would make this for my church ladies group annual fund-raiser (canceled this year because of COVID). I think this healthy alternative might do well with the crowd at my church.  

    A picture of the recipe is attached below. If you try this out, feel free to let me know how you like it.