Chocolate Peanut Nuggets

Chocolate Peanut Nuggets
Dorcas Annette Walker

Have you ever had a day when it seems like everything goes wrong? I had a “Calamity Jane” Saturday this past week. For some reason my dear hens decided somewhere along the way to go modern and stage an attack on my large white rooster that is twice as big as them. My “women libber” hens kept pecking and pulling feathers off of the rooster until they had intimidated the poor fellow to where he hid in the henhouse. Nothing deterred the hens no matter what I sprayed on or did to the dear boy to help him get his self esteem back. I finally decided Saturday afternoon that I had to move my rooster before the hens did him in. So putting on some old clothes and gloves I girded myself for the battle of catching my turkey-sized rooster. Feathers and straw flew everywhere with me biting the dust more than once until I managed to corner and catch the dear boy. By the time I put him into a large feed stack and deposited him in another pen I was out of breath. A couple of hours later I tripped over the small fence around my herb garden while gathering some chives for supper and landed flat on my face in the dirt again. By then my bones were definitely protesting. I dusted myself off and limped into the house for a cup of tea. As dusk settled in I went back outside to help my son get some firewood. We had made a couple of trips and were on our last load- Dwight pushing the wheelbarrow ahead of me- when I reached over and picked up the handle on my wagon to leave the woodpile. Just as I was getting ready to pull the wagon I heard a loud noise and looked up in time to see a dead tree falling in my direction. I screamed and totally froze. The tree twisted and thankfully landed on the workshop standing next to me. Dwight raced back in wide-eyed disbelief. I moved my body and wagon to safety while he pushed the tree over enough for it to crash onto the ground. I tell you once I got back into the house there was nothing that was going to get me out of the door again that day.

So this week I decided to do something simple and made up a batch of my Chocolate Peanut Nuggets. You can mix-match nuts, add dried fruit and/or rice crispies, or substitute white chocolate for dark. Also using decorative candy or cupcake papers will make the Chocolate Peanut Nuggets a perfect homemade candy Christmas gift. Preparation time for my Chocolate Peanut Nuggets is around twenty minutes and this recipe makes three dozen nuggets.

Chocolate Peanut Nuggets

2 lbs dark chocolate almond bark
1 (16 oz) jar of dry roasted peanuts
1 tsp almond flavoring
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a large bowl microwave the chocolate until melted. Stir in the flavorings and peanuts. Drop by large tablespoons into candy or cupcake papers in muffin pans. Chill in the refrigerator or freezer a few minutes until hard. Store in an airtight container!

Weekly tip: To help make it easier and less of a mess to get the melted candy into the papers to harden, use a table knife to first push the paper down into the muffin pan before dropping in the candy mixture!

Dorcas Annette Walker is a published author, columnist, speaker, freelance magazine writer, and photographer from Jamestown, Tennessee. Contact her at: dorcasannettewalker@gmail.com For more recipes check out her Creative Tennessee Mountain Cookin blog at: www.dorcasannettewalker.webs.com