Homemade peppermint patties!

It may have to be a "two post night" as this one must stand on its own.

The other week while Jason was in his SPI class, the girls spent a day here at home with Rachelle.  Kali must have picked up my "pesto bug" (it tends to hit me about this time each year), and she suggested they make peppermint pesto.  Sounds a little weird right?  Looking online only got them savory recipes and they were thinking sweet.  So they took matters into their own hands and made up a recipe.  Here it is (sorry, we haven't done it enough times to have refined the recipe enough to include amounts):

Lots of fresh peppermint leaves picked off the stems

Fair trade organic almonds from the Friendly City Food Co-op

Local honey

Vanilla made by Rachelle

Coconut oil that has been warmed enough to be liquefied

Puree in a blender or whatever you might use to make pesto. 

Well, what is one going to do once the pesto is made? When blended it is a little runny and so in order to do much with it, other than eat it by the spoonful which is not a bad idea, you might wish to harden it up a bit in the fridge.  It is kind of like a breath mint straight, but it was begging for chocolate.  So that first round we made some into little balls, froze them to harden the coconut oil and then coated them with dark fair trade organic melted chocolate wafers.  Quite tolerable!  They didn't last very long at all and I was already thinking of ways to improve the final product - like making round disks of the pesto so you have more surface area for chocolate.

So today I made a batch of pesto with the girls for the first time and we have our very own homemade peppermint patties hardening in the fridge to be shared at tomorrow's Tangly Woods community meal.  I will admit to being pretty impressed with Kali's invention and pretty pleased with myself for making a homemade version of a candy favorite in the Benner household.  It almost borders on healthy!

YUM!