Candies can seem like a foreign substance to home cooks -- delicious, sugary concoctions that might have been whipped up by a magician. Hard, soft, chewy, tart, sweet, opaque or translucent, the incredible variety of shapes, sizes, flavors and textures can seem both unreal and a little intimidating, especially with Easter candy. Chocolate eggs that mimic real ones? That's gotta be magic.

The thing is -- while it seems other-worldly, candy making is perfectly within anyone's grasp. You can make almost any candy you conceive of with just a little time, patience, perseverance and creativity -- and Easter is the perfect time to start! That being said, a lot of candy recipes make it all seem deceptively easy, as if candy making is as simple as making a sandwich or whipping up a pie. Some really are that easy, but some are more on the scale of delicate art.

To start you on the path towards becoming a candy-making dynamo, I'm going to spend the week sharing Easter recipes with you. All have been filtered through me -- a woman who hasn't made candy since childhood.

After an uphill battle, I've filtered out the hassles and now have five candies that can make Easter all the sweeter. First up: Molding chocolate into tasty little candies.

As noted previously on Slashfood, there was a time when candymaking was an expected part of a homemaker's repertoire. The holidays evoke nostalgia, so is candymaking too far a taffy-stretch for December's annual kitchen marathons? Something's got to fill all of those stockings being hung by all of those chimneys with care, and handmade candy exudes charm and tastes good.

Into this fray enters cookbook author Lou Seibert Pappas. Her Christmas Candy Book is a small but thorough indoctrination into the world of bubbling syrups, satiny molten chocolate, silken fondant, springy mazzetta, colorful pastes, gooey clusters, and sticky peels. There are sweetly staged photographs, easily followed recipes and a short history of confectionery (including a section on Christmas candy), with a list of techniques, tools, and those wonderful charts that use phrases like "hard crack stage." (Note to Santa: I now expect to find a candy hammer in my stocking, and promise to respond with enough peanut brittle [page 36] to tear out the molars of all nine reindeer. If reindeer have molars.).

Making your own candy is not difficult, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It's the holiday dedicated to love and all things romance. The stores are full of flowers, cards...and chocolate! While there is good chocolate to be had from the store, wouldn't it be nice to present your sweetie with something more from the heart, something homemade?

It's really not difficult. It takes a little time and a little bit of patience. It also takes some good quality chocolate and a candy mold. If you have these things, you too can make can make some home made chocolate treats for your special someone.

I am going to guide you through the process step by step. We'll talk about candy molds, chocolate qualities and how to temper it, as well as some fillings and some ways to finish the candies. It's a fun project and a nice thing to surprise your baby with. Click the hearts to keep reading in order to find out all about making your own confectionary masterpiece.

For the next two weeks I'm in Portland, Oregon, hanging out with my parents for the holidays. One of the first things I did when I got here was pull down my mom's old recipe notebook and start flipping through. She's had this collection of recipes since before I was born, although she replaced the half-size binder about ten years ago when the original one started shredding. Twenty-seven years of use will do that.

In the miscellaneous section, I spotted this recipe for Christmas Divinity and thought it would make a great recipe to share. I haven't tried this out myself, so I'd love to hear if you guys give it a try. I have no idea where the recipe comes from as it is cut out of ancient newsprint and pasted to a sheet of notebook paper. For another divinity recipe, check out this one on Noshtalgia (which is where I found the picture above).