Baking, jellies, canning the arcane sciences

Thinking on it, biggest problem with baking is not dying of the beetus. Making fresh bread and cookies all the time is dangerous.

Dr.Retarded said:

Pralines are that way. If you want the best, the weather has to be right. I don't know what the requirement is, but I would ask my mom to make them or sometimes she would just make them because everything was right. We always had them at least once a year growing up.

I think a lot of candy making is temperature / environment sensitive and way crazier than baking is. I've got a couple of cookbooks with praline recipes, but I've never made them. I don't think they're real difficult but like you said the weather has to be right.

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Pralines are probably like brittle and toffee in that the humidity doesn't affect the cooking part, because the sugar gets so hot there is no water vapor left in it.

The problems come in the cooling and storage portion. Brittle especially (even moreso when it's the pulled type) is quick to soak up any humidity in the air and it keeps best when it's below freezing outside, unless you want to crank your AC down to make sure it keeps running. In warmer climates, you may be able to seal the brittle in a bunch of airtight containers, then be mindful of trying to keep them sealed up when not actively eating it.

I assume this problem is really across all hard sugar candies. Soft sugar candy like caramels and fudge, on the other hand, are much more forgiving. I have eaten soft caramels a month+ after Christmas and it's fine.

When it comes to caramels, I haven't made it before, but family members did/do. I have been told that up north, they need to cook the same recipe ~5 more degrees to get the same consistency. Dunno if everyone is checking their thermometers in boiling water before cooking though.