I know the adults thought they were a lot of work, but outside of Utah, they were probably the best PR the church ever had. I remember after we quit doing it, I would always have teachers come up to me in school, when they learned I was a Mormon, and want to know when they could place their orders, years after we stopped. In the southeastern US, it was the only thing anyone liked about the Mormons.

Also, if anyone knows where I can find the recipes we used...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2012 01:03PM by forbiddencokedrinker.

Wow...I had no idea tscc used to do that! Was the candy that good?! I know I was all psyched to try funeral potatoes for the first time and when I had the chance, I wanted to spew 'em out! I thought they were horrible.

The candy was produced in individual units, following recipes that had to be followed to the letter to insure quality control. I don't know about Utah produced candy, but in the southeastern United States, where we can make an opossum taste good, they were magical.

It was the Saturday of general conference weekend, before the priesthood meeting.

It was the major fundraiser for that ward. I don't remember what else was served, but the food was yummy.

We also made elephant ears at local fairs and had fried chicken dinners (I think).

I'll bet they don't do that any more.

I remember making 'Mormon chocolates!' They were a tremendous fund-raiser, because everyone liked the totally-fresh, no chemicals approach - and our stake took the whole thing very seriously. Never could quite figure out why TSCC put the kibosh on the whole thing ... maybe because it was so much fun.

I could never 'dip' because my hands are always so warm - so I prepared centres and rolled fondant. I, too, always had way more requests for boxes of chocolates than I could possibly deliver; and it really was the biggest positive the Mormons had going in our area.

Fun times!

I loved them. My favorite were the green minty balls dipped in chocolate, followed by the peanut clusters.

Hmmm... I didn't know this was a churchwide thing; I thought it was just some harebrained scheme of the YW leader back in the day. She bought large quantities of chocolate and some plastic molds (and sucker sticks, IIRC) and we had several YW 'activities' wherein we'd melt the choco, pour into molds, pop sticks in the molds, let 'em cool and harden, then pop out of the molds, wrap in plastic and sell to whomever. It was much like selling Girl Scout cookies. You'd eat half your candy stash yourself and reimburse yourself with your own babysitting money and call it a fundraiser. It would have been healthier and more efficient to simply go buy a candy bar, eat it, and then make a cash donation. LOL

I do not recall my parents ever so much as paying one penny for any bit of candy I sold either for church or for school. (Nobody bought GS cookies from me either.)

It also seems like, after a while, the YW leader just passed out bags of chocolate blanks and told us to go make more choco bunnies to sell. I don't remember anyone carefully tracking how many bunnies we'd been given (or made) to sell vs. how much money we actually turned in. I was honest about that sort of thing (and still am) but I participated a lot in candy sales at school for other things and those sales were pretty closely monitored. I wouldn't expect the same attention to detail among some SAHM-with-six-kids YW leader.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2012 03:13PM by dogzilla.

...they'd send us out into the gentile world to sell pecans door to door. That was back in the '60s when local units were partly responsible to things like the building fund.

Why pecans? I have no idea. I guess someone in the ward had a connection with a nut wholesaler or something. I annoyed a lot of people selling nuts, but it was better than when I was a missionary later. At least we were selling something people might actually want.

There was a woman in my ward growing up that was a candy expert. Made fondant chocolate covered Easter Eggs.

Yep, I remember, though I was a kid eating the leaker chocolates!

I still make fondant, just like my mom did - and continues to do every christmas.

This site has easy and delectable fudge / fondant recipes:

http://oldtymefudgerecipes.com/

Thank you, I have bookmarked that page, and will be going grocery tomorrow.