honey sesame candy and hiking pichinca

So i’m something like third or fourth generation of expat living in my apartment. These kinds of places are always quite interesting because you end up inheriting lots of random items that people leave behind that they dont want to take with them when moving back home. Beyond the typical collections of books and pirated DVDs, i gotten stuff ranging from the helpful (a blender, bath towels), to the slightly odd (a half empty 10 pound bag of traders joe’s brown rice -imagine bring that down that in your suitcase!) to the downright bizarre (old underwear jumping to mind).

In any case, in this particular apartment, one of the past inhabitants apparently spent large amounts of money on shopping in health food stores (resulting in there being half a bottle of colloidal silver-which wikipedia tells me is ineffective as an antibiotic and too much can permanently turn your skin gray-blue… if anyone wants to take it off my hands, youre more than welcome to it…)

Curiosity over these pills, powders, and other assorted potions has led to a great bit of google apothecary education teaching me that flower essences contain the vibrations and emotional energies of flowers which will make you a more calm, patient person, that slippery elm bark is excellent for coughs, typhoid, and worm infections, and angelica root is useful for “colds, diseases of the urinary organs and wind.”

In any case, i found myself the proprietor of a large jar of sesame seeds. Some recipe searches told me to make things like asian chicken, but i wasnt too excited about that, so i was reduced to putting the occasional tablespoon in my granola.

Until i came upon the idea of make sesame honey candy! and it was such a great success i want to to share it with you all! It was both easy and super tasty.  This is pulled together from a variety of recipes that i found online.  It probably took me like 30 min all together.

What you need to make the yumminess:

• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of honey
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspon of cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon water
• 2 cups sesame seeds
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons of butter
• 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda

what you do to make the yumminess:

1. Lightly toast the sesame seeds in a nonstick pan for a 5-10 minutes until they are lightly browned and smelly lovely (have to admit, this step was the most intimidating for me, having not really ever tried toasting anything before. its pretty stupid easy).

   

2. combine sugar, honey, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a sauce pan over med heat until it comes to boil.

   

3. Let it boil exactly 2 minutes and then add in the butter, vanilla and sesame seeds.
4. Once the vanilla is melted, remove from heat and add in the baking soda. It will foam up a bit (not quite third grade science experiment disaster level, but still exciting), and and food.com promised me that this will make your final candy a bit fluffier.  I dont know if this really worked, but i would try it again.
5. Pour onto a slip-mat baking sheet.
6. If you dont have a fancy slip-mat baking sheet like me, no worries. You can just make a ghetto version by cutting open a thick plastic shopping bag. it really worked quite perfectly.

   

7. allow to cool slightly, then cut into diamonds. once hard, store separating layers with waxed paper (or if youre me, more plastic shopping bags).
8. awe your friends. and never have to even turn on your oven.

the inspiration for this great recipe find was that I was about to hike up a volcano…Runa Pichincha to be exact.  So Nick, Laurel, Tes, and I set out, on a journey that looked and felt a bit like climbing up to Mordor.