Knight Ridder Newspapers

I remember my grandmother’s Christmas candy: two kinds of divinity (plain and peppermint) and peanut brittle. She made it the old-fashioned way – over a stove with a candy thermometer. Then she got a microwave and, hot diggity, she could make her holiday candies in half the time, without having to worry about the soft boil stage.

Create your own holiday candy memories with “A Baker’s Field Guide to Holiday Candy & Confections” by Dede Wilson (Harvard Common Press, $16.95). It’s a spiral-bound treasure trove of sweets from around the world, encompassing candies from India, America, Germany, France and Australia.

The format is as user-friendly as it is informative. For each recipe, Wilson cites the holiday, the type of candy (molded, pulled, drop, bar), the country of origin, a simple description of the sweet, the author’s field notes, and lifespan. For example, candy canes are a Christmas pulled candy, originating from the United States and Germany.

Wilson tells us that candy canes date to Germany in the 1670s and that their lifespan is one month at room temperature stored on parchment paper.

There are 78 candy recipes in this guide, none that suggest using a microwave. Still, I bet my grandmother would love this book.