How to: Make Cowboy Candy – Candied Jalapeños

How to: Make Cowboy Candy – Candied Jalapeños

Each summer, I love to visit the Farmer’s Market and purchase local produce. Two years ago, we visited a booth where the vendor had jars of  “cowboy candy”. Curious, I bought a jar. Fuad ate it all in one sitting! I vowed to try to make my own version when I had a chance.

Fast forward to today and I decided to finally give it a try. Here is my recipe and tips for making, AND canning, jars of Cowboy Candy.

Let’s get started:

To start, this recipe is based upon 2lbs of jalapeños. You can adjust your recipe to make it more or less as desired. 
Before you begin, please be sure to have your canning jars clean and ready. Wash your jars thoroughly and COMPLETELY rinse. Submerge them onto a rack in boiling water for 10 minutes as your last step of sanitization. 

Recipe:

Ingredients:
Jalapeno Peppers (I used approx. 2lbs or 1kg) I had around 40-50 jalapenos from the farmer’s market
4 cups of white granulated sugar
2 cups of Apple Cider Vineagar
2 tsps of tumeric powder
2 tsps of ginger powder
3 teaspoons of chili powder
Dash of kosher salt

Instructions:
~Remove stems and cut your jalapenos into thin slices. I didn’t measure but approx. 1/4 inch coin slices worked well.
~Combine all your sugar, vineagar, and spices in a pan. Bring this to a rolling boil and cut the heat to simmer.
~Stir until your sugar dissolves and makes a syrup. Add your pepper slices to the syrup and coat thoroughly.
~Mix them completely and bring to a rolling boil once again.
~Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer and cook for about 5 minutes or until your jalapenos soften and begin to darken in color.
~With a slotted spoon, remove jalapenos from your syrup and place into clean, prepared jars. filling up to 1/2 inch from top. Shake and wiggle jar so peppers settle leaving more room to add as needed.
~Once each jar has been filled, pour the syrup over peppers in each jar. Leave about 1/4 inch from top, being sure all are covered.
~Cover and secure lid. Wipe the outside of jar and lid clean because syrup is STICKY!
~Place your secured jars of peppers into a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Jars should pop to insure they have sealed correctly. If your jar lid does not pop, don’t worry! The peppers are still good but storage is best in the fridge and eaten within a few weeks.
~Properly canned jars can be stored in cool dry place for up to a year.

This Cowboy Candy can be served over cream cheese and spread on crackers, over burgers, nachos and more! They are sweet with a punch of heat!

Cook jalapenos in syrup until they darken in color

fill jars with jalapenos. Pack as many as possible into jar.

Cover your jalapenos with syrup and fill to 1/4 inch from top.

Add lids and tighten (finger tight only) before adding them to a boiling water bath.

After 5-7 days your cowboy candy is ready to eat! Perfect over cream cheese as a dip!

Spread it on a cracker for a FABULOUS snack. Sweet and savory with a punch of heat!

Have your favorite person give it a try!

Guaranteed to be a hit!

Thank you so much for giving our recipe a try! We hope our Cowboy Candy is a hit at your home as much as it is at ours! 

Happy Hooking and Cooking!
~Shannon and Fuad 

How to Make: Pretzel Bites

Welcome to our family kitchen! Today’s recipe is going to be Pretzel Bites!

We are going to show you how to make these bites using only a few ingredients.
Now let’s get started!

Recipe for Pretzel Bites:
Ingredients:
1-Canned Bisquits such as Jumbo Grands or similar
1/4 c. Baking SODA
3-4 Tblsp of Butter Coarse salt – sea or kosher
Water for boiling

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400* F Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper set aside Open your canned bisquits and be ready to get a jump scare like I did! Cut each bisquit into 4-6 equal parts- I quartered mine to make 32 bites Once cut into pieces, lightly shape into round or cubed pieces (optional)
Fill a sauce pan half full of water and bring water to a boil Slowly add baking soda to water in increments as to not overflow Once your baking SODA is added, add your dough pieces into the boiling baking soda water Turn the pieces in the boiling water and remove.

DO NOT KEEP them in the water too long or they will turn mushy. Once removed, set the dough pieces on your parchment lined cookie sheets. Place cookie sheets with your dough pieces into your preheated 400*F oven and bake for 15-20 minutes depending on your oven. Mine went for 18 minutes and they were perfect!

When done, they should have a beautiful dark brown coloring like pretzels! Melt butter Remove sheets from your oven and brush bites with melted butter while still warm Sprinkle Pretzel Bites with salt and ENJOY!

Dip them in melted cheese or enjoy on their own!


Optional: Instead of sprinkling with salt, you can roll your warm buttered bites in a cinnamon sugar mixture for a sweeter version! Dip them in some frosting! Delicious! Join us each week for more fun and easy recipes! Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to our channel!

Happy Hooking and Cooking!
~Fuad, Shannon, & Nadia!

Our Introduction!

Our Introduction!

Hello YARNutopians,

Since everyone here knows Nadia so well, and is familiar with her and her craft, Fuad and I wanted to introduce ourselves to this audience. We hope to get to know you more, as well as opening our home and hearts to you, as we take some new direction with YARNutopia.

We are Nadia’s parents, Fuad and Shannon. We are the behind-the-scenes operation team of YARNutopia. As we prepare to take this platform to new places, we thought it would be a great time to share more about ourselves beyond what has popped up from time to time.

Getting To Know Us

Fuad and I have been married for 35 years. We have three wonderful adult children; two of whom are married.  We have three grandchildren. We are also foster parents to three teen girls. Fuad and I have been licensed foster parents for just over two years and are trained in Level 4 Trauma-Informed Foster Care.

Outside of family, we love to explore nature, travel across the globe, and even find adventure right in our own back yard. We live in a rural community in North Central Wisconsin and love this area tremendously. It is full of an abundance of nature and wildlife; much of which we hope to explore more with you here.

Our hobbies include photography, videography, woodworking (visit our Etsy shop HERE), jewelry making, cooking, baking, home projects, DIY, decorating, and so much more! We ARE BUSY and hope to show some of these activities to you. In our spare time, Fuad loves to tinker on cars, film and photograph wildlife(you can find our other YouTube channel HERE), and I love to read and write – when life quiets down enough to pull out a good book. Be on the lookout for some book reviews as well! When I read a fantastic novel, I want to tell the world!

Not so long ago, I used to work in leasing and together we ran a portrait studio, Image By Fuad. Now we are busy with home and family, as well as running our small businesses. We also stay VERY active as a treatment foster home to teens. We have a lot of experiences to bring to the table. We are so glad you are along for the ride!

So join us as we begin this new adventure here on YARNutopia. Keep coming back each week to see what we have going on in our world and we guarantee that you will love what we have in store!

Happy Hooking & More,
~Shannon & Fuad

Taking A New Direction

Taking A New Direction

Hello Yarnutopians!

It has been no surprise that Nadia has had her hands full with Nasir and motherhood. She is extremely busy and has scaled back considerably on her crochet. She is still busy creating and sharing her work, just not at the level you have grown accustomed to. Understandably so. Nasir keeps her on her toes!!

We have a fantastic audience of creative individuals that check in daily to see what is new in our neck-of-the-woods. For that reason, our family has decided to take YARNutopia in a new direction. Crochet has, and always will be, the foundation for this platform. Nadia will continue to create and share her creations as often as time allows. Fuad will continue to film some of those creations as well. We know you have grown to love this combination of easy-to-follow patterns and clear, precise videos that allow the viewer to see everything in detail. That will still remain. However, we hope to grow this platform in new directions. It is for that reason, we have decided to add a few more elements to our website for you to enjoy.

What to expect

Many of you know Fuad as our cameraman. You have seen him on camera from time to time. He is also busy behind-the-scenes with us doing much more than working the camera. We hope to use YARNutopia to share some of those interests and make this more of a family/lifestyle blog. As Nadia’s parents, you may not see us as often in front of the camera but we stay quite busy in other contributing ways to this platform. We enjoy much more creative outlets in our spare time and together with Nadia, we want to share some of those with you. Things such as cooking, woodworking, DIY projects, and so much more. We will be changing our name to YARNutopia & More to encompass all that we hope to share with you!

We look forward to you staying around to see some of the new changes, as well as enjoying Nadia’s newest patterns. Keep those crochet hooks handy! You will need those! Her hands may be full but she still keeps them busy with crochet projects every day! We just plan to add some fun family and lifestyle blogs alongside her crochet projects! Don’t go anywhere, because there’s a lot of exciting content about to come your way. Stay Tuned!!

Happy Hooking & More!

Fuad, Shannon, & Nadia

 

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