Get a long lost recipe from the Joy of Cooking as Food columnist Heather Atwood visits with MaryAnn McCormick of Lark Fine Foods. A recipe for Nut Crunch candy that was in the 1970’s Joy of Cooking edition but is not in the newer editions today. That is why MaryAnne McCormick will not part with the older ones, some of her favorite recipes are no longer being printed.
2 cups of assorted nuts, including large dense nuts like almonds and Brazil nuts
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
3 tablespoons water
butter to coat slab
¼ pound semisweet chocolate, melted
1. Sliver large, dense nuts like almonds and Brazil nuts. (Others can be left whole. You may add them at once to the mixture if you like a roasted quality in the nut. If not, spread them on a buttered slab or pan and pour the syrup over them after cooking.) Finely chop ¼ cup of the remaining nuts.
2. Butter a slab. Heat in a large, heavy skillet the sugar, butter and water. Cook rapidly and stir constantly about 10 minutes or until mixture reaches the hard crack stage, 300 degrees F.
3. Add 1 to ½ cups of the nut meats.
4. Turn the candy quickly onto the buttered slab. Form into a shape about 1 foot square.
5. When almost cool, brush with the melted chocolate. Before the chocolate hardens, dust with the remaining ¼ cup of finely chopped nuts.
6. Break into pieces when cold.
Recipe from Joy Of Cooking, circa 1974.
From Food For Thought by Heather Atwood:
MaryAnn McCormick, petite and pretty, looks as if she would like her cookies dainty, but she makes shortbread flavored with rosemary and salt, chocolate cookies with chili and pepper, and toasted coconut cookies with rum.
"Cookies for grown-ups" she calls the line of sophisticated tastes she developed with her daughter, Nicole Nordensved, and packages now as Lark Fine Foods — "Lark" for no other reason than MaryAnn and some friends sat around a table hunting for words and that one fit. Mighty Gingers packed with two kinds of ginger, Polenta Pennies with lemon peel and golden raisins, and Scourtins, cookies with cured black olives, make the entire line of treats that have matured enough to sit at the adults' table.
MaryAnn McCormick lives in East Gloucester. A year ago she was still in her home kitchen baking cookies three to four days a week from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., but often until 10 p.m. and sometimes even 1 in the morning, if things broke or burned, simply to supply three local shops with Cha-Chas (the spicy chocolate cookie). Now, they are baked in an industrial kitchen in Essex.
MaryAnn doesn't produce these Parmesan Cheese Wafers for Lark Fine Foods only because the cheese would require them to be refrigerated, but they are a cinch to make, delicate, and delicious with a glass of white wine, indeed probably what –a Cheez-it long ago wanted to be. These may be cookies for grown-ups, but MaryAnn's husband, the camera crew and I all grabbed them off their warming rack as if we were manner-less children.
