HOMEMADE OH HENRY! BARS: 3 Recipes for National Candy Day!

Today is National Candy Day, and an Oh Henry! Bars is one of my favorites. Of course you can buy one to celebrate the day, but why not make your own?

So what exactly is an Oh Henry! Bar?  

From Wikipedia:

Oh Henry! is a chocolate bar containing peanuts, caramel, and fudge coated in chocolate. It was first introduced in 1920, by the Williamson Candy Company of Chicago, Illinois. According to legend, Oh Henry! was originally named after a boy who frequented the Williamson company, flirting with the girls who made the candy. The name is also said to be a homage to American writer, O. Henry. However, there is no definitive explanation as to the exact origin of the name.

Another theory is that the candy bar was invented by a man named Tom Henry of Arkansas City, Kansas. Tom Henry ran a candy company called the Peerless candy factory, and in 1919 he started making the Tom Henry candy bar. He sold the candy bar to Williamson Candy Company in 1920 where they later changed the name to "Oh Henry!". Henry's family now runs a candy factory in Dexter, Kansas that sells "momma henry" bars, which are nearly identical to the original candy bar.

In 1923, an employee of Williamson, John Glossinger, announced that he was going to make the Oh Henry! bar a national best seller. Company officials said it was impossible and denied him the funds for an advertising campaign. Glossinger went into the streets and pasted stickers saying merely "Oh Henry!" on automobile bumpers. People became curious as to what an Oh Henry! was and sales for the bar rose quickly.

1926 Oh Henry! Advertisement

Nestlé acquired the United States rights to the brand in 1984, and continues to produce the bar. In Canada, the bar is currently sold by The Hershey Company and manufactured at their Smiths Falls, Ontario facilities. Because of Canada's different chocolate standards, the Canadian "Oh Henry!" is not considered a "chocolate bar" and is labelled instead as a "candy bar." In fact, unlike the American version, which labels the bar as "milk chocolate," the Canadian version makes no mention of chocolate on the front of the wrapper. Hershey sells Oh Henry! bars made in Canada on a very limited basis in the United States as Rally bars, using the trademark of a Hershey product introduced in the 1970s and later discontinued.

Want to make your own Oh Henry! Bars? Here are three different recipes. Funny, but several of them include oats. I'm partial to #3 because it doesn't include oatmeal, but that's just me. The first two recipes really capture the flavor. Why not try all three?

1. Oh Henry! Candy Bars

Ingredients
4 cups oatmeal
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup butter (melted)
1 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup peanut butter

Directions
Mix together oatmeal, brown sugar, white sugar, and melted butter.
Press into greased 9 x 13 pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Melt chocolate chips and peanut butter.
Spread over baked bars.
Put in fridge so frosting hardens completely.

2. Oh Henry! Candy Bars 

Ingredients
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
1/2 cup white Karo syrup
2 cups oatmeal

Directions
Melt butter, sugar ,and syrup.
Add oatmeal.
Press in well buttered 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake 12 minutes at 350 degrees.

Melt:
1 c. crunchy peanut butter
1 (6 oz.) chocolate chips

Cool bottom layer and spread mixture over the top.
Refrigerate.
Cut in squares.

3. Oh Henry! Candy Bars (my favorite recipe)

Part One
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup water
3/4 cup peanut butter

Directions:
Combine over heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved.
Cook until it reaches the hard boil stage (265 degrees).
Let cool
Add peanut butter.
Stir, then shape into rolls 3/4 inch thick and 1 inch long.
Set aside.

Part Two
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 pounds peanuts, chopped fine
8 oz. dark chocolate, chopped

Directions:
Cook corn syrup and sugar together until it reaches the hard boil stage (265 degrees).
Dip candy from first mixture into second mixture, then roll in peanuts while still hot.
Melt dark chocolate and dip rolls into melted chocolate
Place on parchment paper.

DEEP FRIED CANDY BARS: Fair Food

If you've been to the State Fair in the past 20 years, you've probably tried some sort of fried food. Have you had Fried Mars, Milky Way, or Snickers Bars? Not so healthy, but oh so good.

You might think that Fried Candy Bars originated at U.S. State and County fairs, but you'd be wrong. This unique treat was invented in Stonehaven, Scotland, at The Haven Chip Bar. The first candy bar to be battered and deep-fried was a Mars Bar. What began as a dare between two chip cooks became an iconic fair food.

You can make this Fried Treat at home. For the following recipe, you can use Mars Bars, Milky Way, or Snickers, or almost any nougat/caramel combination bar. Hint: Chill the bars first to ensure none of the melting chocolate and caramel leaks into the oil. You can also put a stick through the bar before frying (for easier handling when eating), but don't take the bar out of the oil by the stick! Use tongs.

DEEP FRIED CANDY BARS

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup corn flour
1/8 tsp baking soda
2 cups milk
1 cup vegetable oil
2 chilled full-size chocolate covered caramel/nougat candy bars (or 4-6 minis), chilled

Directions
Mix flour, corn flour, and baking soda in shallow bowl. Stir 1/2 milk into mixture, then add rest and stir again (it's a thin batter)
Heat oil in deep-fryer or deep skillet to 350 degrees (Be careful)
Dip candy bars in batter to coat
Carefully put coated candy bar into hot oil and fry for 2-3 minutes until golden.

Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: Guest Post by Susie Norris and Susan Heeger

Who wouldn't want to make their own Hand-Crafted Candy Bars? Friends Susan Heeger and Susie Norris collaborated on a great new cookbook, Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: From-Scratch, All-Natural, Gloriously Grown-Up Confections (Chonicle Books) that incorporates their love of candy, natural ingredients and other confections with terrific recipes for the home cook. You can even create your own signature candy bar (look for their suggestions in the mix-and-match flavor chart to get started). Scroll down for more about Susan Heeger and Susie Norris, authors of Hand-Crafted Candy Bars  below, plus a recipe for Soft Chocolate Nougat. Thanks, Susan and Susie, for the guest post!

SUSIE NORRIS and SUSAN HEEGER:
Our Favorite Bar of All Time

Nothing sweetens a friendship more than discovering you share a vice. We’re not talking about the dangerous or criminal, but something you feel just complicated enough about to sneak off and do alone, before your roommates or children come home.

In our case, the evidence was tucked into our purses, slipped behind headboards, buried deep in our trash: candy wrappers!

The day our bond became clear—probably through a casually dropped remark about some piece of caramel-rich, nut-laden, chocolate-covered manna in a wrapper (“You--? No! You too??”)—we each felt understood, justified, legitimized in ways we hadn’t before. We shared our tastes and preferences, which were remarkably similar, and Susie, a veteran pastry chef and chocolatier, began to test her creations on me. I appreciated her even more!

Then one night, at a dinner party, the subject of candy came up, and it turned out that everyone at the table—our husbands, neighbors, friends—were all dedicated consumers of Hersheys, Mars, and Cadbury. Each person had specific passions for certain bars—Snickers or Baby Ruths, Butterfingers or Milky Ways. They had strict preferences for dark or milk chocolate, mint, caramel, or peanut butter as companion flavors, as well as fixed beliefs as to the permissible number of different elements in a bar. Some liked them simple, smooth; others, complex and crunchy. Many of these people were also accomplished cooks, comfortably familiar with Valrhona chocolate, Maldon sea salt, Plugra butter.

It suddenly seemed plain to us that our secret passion—which was, of course, shared by so many others—could be taken to another level of perfection if we made candy bars ourselves, using the best ingredients we could find. We are, after all, living in a wonderful moment for hand-crafted food, with home cooks everywhere re-discovering the pleasures of canning and jarring tomatoes and peppers, putting up jam, making pickles, and baking bread, hand-pies, crackers. Inventive chefs are pushing the frontiers of contemporary cuisine with unexpected pairings of food textures and flavors that are broadening our palates to new worlds of possibility. And we are finding the fresh potential for building community through shared culinary passions—via old-fashioned recipe-swapping, cooking together with friends, coming together over inspired, home-cooked food.

In the wake of that dinner party, Susie very quickly came up with an artisanal version of our favorite chocolate-dipped, caramel-nougat-peanut bar and then a number of other variations on bars we have eaten and loved since childhood. The two of us began cooking like mad, boiling caramel, whipping up nougat and fondant, roasting nuts, tempering great vats of dark and milk chocolate. As we worked, layering these elements into bars that were enthusiastically received by other friends, and our husbands and children, we cooked up the idea for our book: Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: From-Scratch, All-Natural, Gloriously Grown-Up Confections.

Thinking about that experience—all the happy hours we spent in each other’s kitchens—moves me to amend my earlier statement. Honestly? Nothing sweetens a friendship more than making candy bars together.

Soft Chocolate Nougat
From: Hand-Crafted Candy Bars
Makes about 4 cups (795 G)
Time needed: 20 min

3 cups/355 g ice
3 egg whites
3⁄4 cup/150 g sugar
1⁄2 cup/120 ml corn syrup
1⁄4 cup/60 ml water
1⁄2 cup/80 g melted high-quality dark chocolate
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1⁄2 tsp salt

1. Put the ice in a medium bowl and set aside. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Put the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and set aside.
3. Stir together the sugar, corn syrup, and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and continue to boil without stirring until the mixture reaches 225°F/110°C on a candy thermometer.
4. Begin whipping the egg whites on low speed. Continue cooking the sugar syrup until it reaches 245°F/118°C. (If your temperature goes higher, shock the syrup by setting the pan in the bowl of ice.) Pour a splash of the syrup into the egg whites, aiming for the space between the rim of the bowl and the whisk attachment. Continue whisking as you slowly add the rest of the hot sugar syrup. Increase the mixer speed to high and whip until the nougat reaches a full, frothy foam, about 2 minutes.
5. Allow the nougat to cool for about 20 minutes. (It should be close to room temperature and the bottom of the mixing bowl should no longer feel hot.) Turn the mixer on again and add the melted chocolate, butter, vanilla, and salt. Continue mixing until smooth. Use a big nonstick spatula or wooden spoon to scoop the nougat onto the prepared baking sheet. Allow the nougat to come to room temperature before using in candy-bar production.

***

Susie Norris is an author, artisan chocolatier, pastry chef, and culinary school instructor. Her award-winning chocolate business, Happy Chocolates, has been featured on Food Network and in More magazine. She recently taught baking and pastry arts at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and Sur La Table in Los Angeles. Her favorite commercial candy bars are Snickers and Twix. Susan Heeger is a longtime book, magazine, and newspaper feature writer with a specialty in food, garden, design, home, and lifestyle stories. She co-authored From Seed to Skillet, an edible gardening primer and cookbook (also published by Chronicle Books), and is a contributing editor for Garden Design magazine. Her favorite commercial candy bars are Milky Way and Snickers.