This is a great use for leftover candy canes after Christmas—and a great dessert along with Christmas cookies! With its color and spices, it‘s also a wonderful Easter treat.
Choices, choices.
The original recipe does not call for salt, but this is a very sweet recipe despite no “added” sugar. Candy canes are mostly sugar, after all. It wouldn’t surprise me if the original assumed you’d be adding salt. It seems to me that a lot of old recipes leave salt out under the apparent assumption you know it needs to be added.
In the fifties and sixties cookbooks, Better Homes and Gardens often included salt in their instructions, but left it out of their ingredient lists. I suspect that was part of the transition to including salt in the recipes instead of assuming it, but this is only a suspicion. I have no proof of it.
The first time I made this, I made it without salt, and let me tell you, I did not throw it out. Try it both ways and see if you prefer it one way or the other. It won’t go to waste.
…long distance eating and drinking is perhaps the greatest single pleasure in life. It is the basis of health, good temper and sexual prowess. — Carl Randall (Life, Loves, and Meat Loaf)