Author: thebakingbooth

I love to bake and teach; seems like a great combo for a food blog :)

Around the World in Food – Australia, part 1

We’ve recently started a new tradition in our house.  Every Sunday we’re going to make a dinner from a different country around the world.  Notice I said _we’re_ going to make this.  It’s a family effort and we are having a blast with this!  Cooking, learning new things about a country, debating the country we’re going to do the following week, etc.  Great fun 🙂

So the first week was Australia.  Our meal consisted of wonderfully flavored meat pies, mashed potatoes, a delicious kiwi-banana-papaya fruit salad, and Anzac biscuits (cookies).  Notice what’s missing?  No vegetables!  Don’t know if they have a salad every night or what, but we all enjoyed it.  This is how we all were after dinner…

Let’s start with the dessert, shall we?  After all, that is the best part of dinner, no? 🙂

Anzac biscuits have long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) established in World War I.  According to Wikipedia, there are claims that these cookies were sent by wives to soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily and they kept well during transport.  The spoilage part doesn’t make sense tho ’cause even if they had eggs in them (they don’t), the cookies were cooked.  How would they spoil?  What does make sense is that they would travel well.  These are a sturdy, crunchy cookie, but oh so good 🙂

So let’s get to these, shall we?

Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking so don’t have pictures of these in process.  The only difficult part of these is that the dough looks like crumbles when you’re done mixing it.  I found the best part was to grab handfuls, squish them into balls, and put them on my parchment-lined baking sheet.  They baked up just fine.

ANZAC BISCUITS (cookies)

(adapted from Aussie-Info.com)

Ingredients:

1 c. (90 g) rolled oats (I used quick oats; I’m sure old-fashioned would be fine as well.)

3/4 c. (54 g) shredded coconut

1 c. (120 g) all-purpose flour

1 c. (200 g) white sugar

1 stick (4 oz, 114 g) butter

2 T (30 ml, 41 g) light corn syrup

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 T (15 ml or g) hot water

Directions:

1.  These bake much longer than most cookies do, but at a lower temperature, so preheat your oven to 300 F (150 C).

2.  Line your cookie sheets with parchment.  (Lightly grease your cookie sheet if you don’t have a liner or parchment.  Note that parchment is wonderful — non-stick and easy cleanup!  I use Reynold’s or Wilton brands and just wipe mine off and stick it in the freezer for future use, reusing most sheets 4 or 5 times each.)

3.  Mix oats, flour, sugar, and coconut together in a large bowl.  Set aside.

4.  Place butter and corn syrup in a small saucepan and melt over medium heat.

5.  Mix hot water and baking soda together in a small bowl and pour into the butter/syrup mixture.

6.  Pour the liquid mixture over the dry ingredients and stir together.

7.  You will notice that the mixture is crumbly.  This is ok!  Grab bunches together with your hands, form balls, and place on your prepared cookie sheets a few inches apart from each other.

8.  Bake for 20 minutes.

9.  Remove from oven and cool on racks.  The cookies should be a golden brown color.

10.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Mousse

So, according to my better half, it is National Chocolate Mousse Day.  Well, I couldn’t pass that up.  So, in honour of National Chocolate Mousse Day, I present to you today, not one, but two recipes for it.  Grab the lactaid tablets if you need them ’cause we’re talking lots of cream…

Mise en place.  Pick your poison — semi sweet chocolate (chips work fine as does a bar) or cocoa (Penzey’s natural is my fav).  You’ll also need heavy whipping cream, vanilla, and sugar if you’re using cocoa.  If you’re gluten-free, please be sure to read your labels for your vanilla and chocolate to be sure they’re gluten-free.

These are both super quick recipes and very easy.  The one with the cocoa powder is what I use when I make triple chocolate torte (recipe coming eventually! :)), but frankly they both taste very similar.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE (using chocolate chips or a chocolate bar):

(adapted from Luscious Chocolate Desserts by Lori Longbotham)

Ingredients:

(fyi, for liquids similar to water in weight, ml and grams are about the same.)

8 oz (227 g) semi-sweet chocolate (both chips and bar work.  I used Ghiradelli chips ’cause they were cheaper)

2 c. (473 ml, 473 g) heavy whipping cream, *divided*

1-1/2 tsp (7.5 ml) vanilla extract

pinch salt , optional

Directions:

1. Bring 1/2 c. (118 ml) heavy whipping cream to a boil in a small saucepan.

2. Remove pan from heat and stir in chocolate, vanilla, and salt (optional) until the chocolate is melted.  Let cool to room temperature.  (If you’re in a rush, transfer it to a glass bowl for quicker cooling; it will be room temp within a few minutes.)

3. Pour remaining cream into a mixing bowl and mix on med-high (I put the wire whip attachment on my stand mixer and set the speed to 6.) until it’s starting to thicken up and you can see trails from the mixer in the cream.  You do _not_ want the cream to form peaks at this point.

4.  Turn the mixer to low and gradually add the room temp chocolate mixture.  You can either drizzle it in while it’s mixing or add it in a few batches.  Once this is mixed in, you’re done!

Pretty easy, no? 🙂

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE (using cocoa and sugar):

(adapted from Hershey’s Best Cakes)

Ingredients:

(fyi, for liquids similar to water in weight, ml and grams are about the same.)

2/3 c. (135 g) sugar

1/3 c. (27 g) cocoa (natural, not dutched)

1-1/2 c. (355 ml, 355 g) heavy whipping cream

1-1/2 tsp (7.5 ml) vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Combine sugar and cocoa in mixing bowl.

2. Add cream and vanilla.

3. Whisk together briefly to start it and then mix on medium speed for about 3 minutes, until stiff.

How’s that for easy?!  🙂

Let me know if you have any questions and enjoy your mousse!

Going Gluten-Free???

So my 10 yo has been sick for several months now and I’ve been wondering if I should even continue this blog.  We don’t know what he has.  We do know he’s in constant pain, both with his head and stomach.  We tried gluten-free for three weeks.   During this time, I was like, now how can I write a baking blog of all the things I know when I know nothing about gluten-free?!  Turns out I don’t need to become an expert as it made no difference and his celiac test came back negative.

Gluten Geekdom

From a purely geeky perspective, it was quite fascinating to do some gluten-free baking tho so I have added a tag for it and am now at least much more aware of the need for gluten-free recipes for those with celiac, those who are gluten-intolerant, and those who make the choice to go gluten-free for other reasons.

For the unaware, gluten is a protein in wheat (barley, rye, etc.) and oats.  More precisely, it’s a string of amino acids.  The string in oats is ever so slightly different from wheat so some people who can’t have wheat, can have oats, and some can’t.  Gluten is what gives bread it’s wonderful rise (besides yeast) and chewiness.  When you knead bread, you’re developing the gluten in it, stretching out those chains.  When you make cookies, you don’t want to develop the gluten ’cause you’ll end up with tough cookies.  Similarly with cakes.

That’s the whole point of different kinds of flours.  With cake and pastry flour you have very low levels of protein so your cakes and pies will be tender and delicate, not tough and chewy.  Bread flour on the other hand will have some of the highest protein levels around, for higher rise and better texture.

Gluten Free

What does this mean if you’re going gluten-free?  That you need to find a substitute for the gluten.  This is where xanthum gum comes in.  It takes the place of gluten, but it still won’t give you the same texture to your dough and there’s waaaaay more to learn about baking gluten-free than what I’ve picked up these past few weeks.  The texture of bread dough becomes very airy, almost like foam.  And cookies?  I have no idea how people use a cookie scoop with this kind of dough.  It’s crumbles instead of a mass of dough.  I found myself grabbing handfuls to squish together to form balls of dough.  Amazingly enough, it worked!  The cookies were actually quite good, too.  Just don’t expect the exact same flavors.  Afterall, these are made of bean and rice flours largely.

There are some great all-purpose, gluten-free, flours out there (Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur Flour) which will give you a start so you can see the kind of airy dough you end up with when baking this way.  Betty Crocker and Bisquick even have some gluten-free mixes so that you’re not totally left in the dust if you find yourself completely lost.  I’ve made both Betty Crocker’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies and Bob’s Red Mill’s Gluten-Free Pizza Dough mix.  We all loved the pizza dough when I made it into Focaccia, drizzling it with olive oil and sprinkling it with salt and dried rosemary.  Mmmmm Good!  This will be a keeper for the future for sure!

When using gluten-free all-purpose flours, unfortunately, you can just take your favorite recipes, substitute in gf all-purpose flour for regular all-purpose flour, and add a bit of xanthum gum.  I wish.  I asked about this on the King Arthur blog because that’s what the xanthum gum package implied.  There’s more to it than that tho and like I said, I don’t know enough yet to explain it all.

There is lots of information out there to be had on going gluten-free; just google it.  Meanwhile, I highly recommend checking out the King Arthur Flour web site for recipes and information.  Also check out glutenfreegoddess.com.  I have not tried her recipes yet, but they look promising and she gets great comments from her readers.  She also has tags for dairy-free, vegan, etc.

Future

So what does the future hold on this blog?   I have no idea 🙂  My son is awaiting a pediatric gastroenterologist appointment, but I will be back to blogging and working on getting at least a couple of posts out each week because I really enjoy doing this.  When the recipe is gluten-free, I will tag it as such.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging… 🙂

Eat Dirt Dessert

Here’s another no-bake recipe; sorry, but life is just not always what we expect, no?  I’ll get back to baking soon, but right now I’m at a time where I need less time/fuss recipes.  So my youngest munchkin turned 6!  I can’t believe it; my boys are just growing way too fast.  Being super strapped for time, I suggested this for his dessert and he loved it.  I adapted it from a recipe that was given to me twenty years ago (gulp :)).  It’s wonderfully creamy with a hit of chocolate and is pretty fast to put together (I think I took 30 minutes start to finish.).

All you need are Oreo cookies, vanilla pudding mix, milk, butter, cream cheese, and confectioner’s sugar.  I use lactose-free, fat-free milk ’cause that’s what I drink.  I also use Neufchatel cream cheese, which is lower in fat yet still really good, but everything else is the non-low versions.  Feel free to lighten up this recipe as you so desire with low sugar/fat or sugar free / fat free products.

EAT DIRT DESSERT 

Ingredients:

2 small packages (6.8 oz, 192 g all total) of instant vanilla pudding mix

4 cups (900 g) cold milk

1 stick (1/2 c., 113 g) butter

1/3 c. (45 g) confectioner’s sugar

1 package (8 oz, 227 g) Neufchatel cream cheese

1-1/2 containers (12 oz, 340 g all total) cool whip, thawed in the fridge

1-1/2 packages (24 oz, 680 g all total) Oreos (I use regular; use whichever you prefer.)

colored sprinkles

Directions:

1. Put pudding mix in a large bowl.  Mix in milk and set aside for a few minutes to firm up some.

2. Cream together butter and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl.  Use medium to medium-high speed and the flat beater if using a stand mixer.

3. Sift the confectioner’s sugar if lumpy and add to the butter/cream cheese mixture.  Mix well.

4. Stir in prepared pudding and cool whip.

5. Place Oreo cookies about a dozen at a time in a ziploc bag and smash with a rolling pin or the back of a small, sturdy frying pan.  An 8″ cast iron skillet makes quick work of this :))  Once turned to crumbs, place in a medium bowl and set aside.   Don’t worry if they’re a bit lumpy.  Continue until all cookies are crushed.

6.  Layer the cookies and cream mixtures in a trifle dish, clean flower pot, clean dump truck (serve with a shovel :)), or other deep dish, starting and ending with the dirt.  Sprinkle dirt layers with colorful sprinkles if so desired; I don’t, but it would be very colorful and kids would love it :)).  If you have any leftover cream mixture, it freezes well so you can save it.

7.  I sprinkled the top with candy sprinkles, but you can add gummy worms or wrap the bottom of a plant in plastic wrap and stick it down in there to make it look like a potted plant.

Enjoy!

Vanilla Blueberry Syrup

So I went to make waffles for the kids this morning and realized I was out of maple flavoring to make the syrup.  Ok, what to do.  Make Vanilla Syrup?  I use both vanilla extract and maple flavoring to make my syrup normally.  Then I remembered some blueberries I had in the freezer and thought, aha! blueberry syrup!

So I threw a cup of frozen blueberries into a saucepan, added water, white sugar, and brown sugar and brought it to a boil.  After a little while, when the blueberries were bursting and it was starting to thicken a little, I strained out the blueberries, squishing them a little in the strainer to get more juices out, and returned the syrup to the pan.

A little more thickening and it was time to taste.

A spoon. A sip. and aaaah 🙂

But then what did I do?!  Me and my vanilla habit 🙂  I added 1/2 a teaspoon (2.5 ml) of vanilla extract.  That was it!   Not much, right?  What did I discover?  That the blueberries really brought out the vanilla flavor 🙂

So it was still quite good, but I probably should have either left it as is or added just a smidge of lemon juice to brighten the blueberry flavor, like I do in my pie, if I truly wanted blueberry syrup.  Nonetheless I thought it was very worthy of a post, both for the flavor and for the bizarre discovery.

Thus Vanilla Blueberry Syrup was born, with a wonderful flavor of vanilla amongst blueberry overtones.

Ingredients:

1 c. (135 g) frozen blueberries

1/2 c. (4 oz, 113 g) cold water

1/2 c. (100 g) white sugar

1/2 c. (110 g) brown sugar

1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) vanilla extract

Directions:

1.  Put all ingredients except vanilla extract into a small saucepan.

2.  Boil 5 minutes or so, until the blueberries have burst, the syrup is a beautiful blue, and it has thickened slightly.  Use a spoon to sample it and you’ll be able to taste that it has thickened slightly if you’re in doubt visually.

3.  Strain through a sieve into a bowl, squishing the berries a bit to extract more juice.

4.  Pour it back into the pan and boil a few minutes more.  Note that I did this rather than straining at the end because it was easier to see how the syrup was doing.

5.  Stir in vanilla.

6.  Remove from heat and let it cool a bit and it will thicken more.

Enjoy!

 

UPDATE 2mar2012:  Changed ml measurement to grams for water.  Why use milliliters, a measure of volume, when everything else (except vanilla) is in grams, a weight?!  Why not give vanilla in grams?  For a couple of reasons.  One is that my scales are in increments of 5 grams, but rounding up vanilla to 5 grams would have a vastly different effect on a recipe than a difference of 5 grams of flour.  The other reason is that most non-US recipe sites that I see still use teaspoon measurement increments rather than grams for ingredients with such a small quantity even if everything else is in grams.

Cream Cheese Thumbprint Cookies

This recipe was given to me by my aunt in Michigan originally; she is an amazing cook.  I just modified it a bit to make a thumbprint cookie out of it.  There is a lot you can do with this cookie for one with so few ingredients – four!  Egg, cream cheese, butter, and cake mix.

To make the thumbprint cookie, I of course added one more ingredient, jam.

You could use sooo many different kinds of cake mix tho.  I use Butter, but you could use Yellow, Devil’s Food, or whatever your favorite is.  You may want to add an extra egg for Devil’s Food since cocoa tends to create a dryer product unless more moisture/fat is added.  You could also omit the thumbprint and sprinkle with colored sugar.  Red and/or green sprinkled cookies are especially pretty at Christmas 🙂

A note on the brand of cake mix.  I have been told for as long as I can remember that I should buy stock in Duncan Hines.  They have received lots of free advertising from me over the years.  When I buy a mix, that’s all I buy.  Unless you have found a cake mix that is as consistently moist as Duncan Hines, if you use a different brand of cake mix for this recipe, I recommend adding an extra egg for moisture.

You just mix the ingredients together, refrigerate for an hour, drop them out onto parchment lined cookie sheets, and bake.  For thumbprints, I baked them for 7 minutes, pulled them out, used a round 1/2 teaspoon measure to make a nice dip in them, and put in about a 1/2 teaspoon of slightly warmed jam.

I then returned them to the oven for about 3 minutes and pulled them out.

For blue and gold cookies for cubscouts, I used a pureed homemade fresh blueberry pie filling for the thumbprint 🙂

Ingredients:

1 extra large egg

1 butter-flavored cake mix (I prefer Duncan Hines by far)

1 package (8 oz, 114 g) cream cheese (Neufchatel ok; this has less fat than regular cream cheese.)

1/2 stick (2 oz, 57 g) butter

1/4 c. (80 g) raspberry jam, or whatever flavor you like

Directions:

1) Cream together cream cheese and butter using either a wooden spoon or the flat beater attachment on a stand mixer.

2) Add in cake mix and egg and continue mixing.  Once thoroughly mixed, cover with wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

3) Preheat oven to 350F (177C).  While preheating, drop cookies onto a parchment lined cookie sheet using either a cookie scoop or knife and spoon.

4) Bake for 7 minutes.  Meanwhile, preheat jam either in pyrex cup in warm water or in a microwave.  You just need to warm it enough to drop it by spoon into the cookies.  Do not liquify it 🙂

5) If making thumbprint cookies:  After 7 minutes, pull the cookies out.  They may have a few brown tips on the cookies here and there, but will not have much.  Use a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon to make a little dip in the middle of them.  Add in warmed jam.  I found it easier to use a 1/4 teaspoon measure to do this, having it nicely rounded so I was really putting in slightly under 1/2 of a teaspoon of jam into each cookie.

If _not_ making thumbprints, do not pull them out until they are done, after about 10 minutes.

6)  Put the cookies back in the oven for 3 minutes.

7) Pull the cookies out of the oven and cool on a rack.  They’re bottoms should be a nice golden brown, but the tops will just have a few brown tips.

These are a very different cookie for some people since they’re yellow, but one bite of this soft, flavorful cookie and they’ll be won over 🙂

Brigadeiros

I first saw these little gems on an America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) post.  They were just so cute!  Simple, too – just three ingredients + decorating candies (nonpareils)!   In all of the posts I found around the internet, none used vanilla, but they screamed vanilla to me, so mine have four ingredients + nonpareils 🙂   My little brigadeiros are not quite traditional, but they sure are good!

The other thing I noticed is that many of the recipes around the web had very little cocoa.  2 tablespoons, 3 tablespoons.  Ummm.  I guess I’m a chocoholic ’cause that’s not much at all to me.  Eight tablespoons, which is what ATK used did seem a bit much to me so I guess there are even chocolatier chocoholics out there.  I put in 7.  You could get away with 6, but I wouldn’t drop it much more or you may as well scoop the sweetened condensed milk right out of the can and into your mouth 🙂

Something else widely noted was that The United States’ version of sweetened condensed milk isn’t as sweet as that found in Brazil.  wow.  I have a sweet tooth, but I cannot imagine using something even sweeter.  If you’d like, using Nestle’s Quick chocolate drink mix was suggested in several recipes instead of cocoa to make up for the less sweet condensed milk we have.  I did not do this as they are plenty sweet to me.

I also added more butter for a creamier candy, and used natural cocoa instead of Dutch processed, so in the end, I tweaked this quite a bit, but I think you’ll like it.

ok.  enough background info.  Grab a can of sweetened condensed milk, some cocoa powder (regular, natural cocoa, not Dutch processed), some butter, and your vanilla and let’s get to this!

Ingredients:

1 can ( 14 oz, 397 g) sweetened condensed milk (_not_ evaporated milk)

7 tablespoons (40 g) natural cocoa powder (Penzeys is wonderful!)

1/2 stick (2 oz, 57 g) butter

1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla

Directions:

1) Cut up the butter a bit and put it in a small saucepan on medium-low heat along with the condensed milk and cocoa powder.

2) Keep stirring until you think your arm’s going to fall off, occasionally swiping a rubber spatula down the middle to see if it leaves a path.  Once it does, remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the vanilla.  This will take about 15-20 minutes.

3) Pour the mixture into a buttered 8″ x 8″ (20 cm x 20 cm) glass dish and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

4) After 30 minutes, pull it out and scoop the mixture into little balls using either your fingers or a small spoon and your thump to scoop it off.

5) Roll into small balls and roll the balls into nonpareils.  You could include various colorful ones and chocolate shot, or a mixture thereof.

Enjoy!

Dessert Reception

Hi all!  Over the coming weeks I’ll show you recipes for these, but right now, I would just like to show you pictures from a private wine/dessert reception that I made the desserts for this past weekend.

One of the goodies I made were ooey, gooey, chocolately Brigadeiros, a Brazillian candy which I took the liberty of making more chocolaty and less sweet as well as adding some vanilla to.

These are some of the tins that I used in making three kinds of tartlets…

The tartlets were Peas in a Pod, where I made a fresh blueberry pie filling and put a couple of berries on each of the tartlet shells,

Scheherazade, which I adapted from Flo Braker’s Sweet Miniatures, a tartlet with candied craisins (sorry Flo; fresh cranberries were not available; besides, I actually liked the craisins 🙂 and pomegranate seeds,

and Poirettes, also adapted from Sweet Miniatures, a tartlet with tons of flavor going on – pear, almond, rum (just a teeny bit), vanilla, lemon, apricot, and chocolate!  It came together beautifully…

Pardon the funky picture; I can’t get the blog to accept the rotated picture.  The Poirettes are in the middle with Cinnamon Twists (made out of a cottage cheese pastry dough!) surrounding them.

In addition to the tartlets, I made several cookies.  Drei Augen, also adapted from guess where? 🙂  yep, Sweet Miniatures, are an almond, shortbread german cookie (the name translates to three eyes) with a raspberry jam filling (sorry again Flo, I’m not a currant person so didn’t think I’d like currant jam in them.  I’ll try it sometime when I’m not making them for a reception).  I made four desserts for the reception from her book ’cause it was so perfect for this kind of event.  However, beware there are a few errors in the book 😦  Still a wonderful book tho!

The Drei Augen are the cookies around the outside.  In the middle are TCT bites, a triple chocolate torte made into bite-sized cakes.  Mmmmmm good! 🙂

Cream Cheese Thumbprint cookies I adapted from a recipe that I got from my aunt many, many years ago.  I’ve always loved these cookies, but have never done them as thumbprints before.  I wanted to add some color to them tho so voila!

Last of the cookies were a plain shortbread cookie, which I liked so much when I made these from thekeenancookbook.com, that I decided to use them here.  Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of them tho 😦  I also forgot to take a picture of the salted, burnt caramel flavored chocolate coins tho I put some in the freezer so I’ll still post these later.  I originally got the recipe from foodwishes.blogspot.com video recipes.

And the little boy showing off the cheesecake cookies with his hand?  My youngest munchkin…

Cracker Cookies

Many of my favorite dessert recipes originated from my Grandma.  This is another of those.  She was an outstanding cook and whenever we’d visit at Christmas, I’d sneak cookies out of the back room where she kept them.  It didn’t matter that some cookies were already set out, I wanted to see what other kinds were there as well. 🙂  I also copied a few recipes each time we visited.  When she passed, I was given her much treasured recipe box.  She made two kinds of cracker cookies.  One was with graham crackers and called Sunshine Crisps; this one is made with saltines and simply called cracker cookies.  They take a couple of minutes on the stovetop and 10 minutes in the oven.

Gather together a sleeve of saltine crackers and lay them out on a 10.5″ x 15.5″ (27 x 39 cm) stoneware dish with a short lip if you have it.  Otherwise, a jellyroll pan or other pan with sides will work fine, but you will want to cover the bottom with parchment or heavy duty foil.

Next you’ll gather together vanilla extract, butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips (I prefer semi-sweet for this recipe.)  If you’d like to make these Christmasy, also put a couple of candy canes in a zip-closed bag and smash them with a sturdy saute pan to crush them.

You’ll need a small saucepan to melt together your butter and sugar.  Once melted you simply add the vanilla and pour the mixture over the saltines.  Pop it in the oven for 10 minutes, remove, and add your chocolate and mint if desired.

Separate and cool in the fridge and you’re done!

Here are the details:

 

Ingredients:

About 40 saltine crackers

1 c. butter (1/2 lb, 227 g)

1 c. lightly packed light brown sugar (200 g)

9 oz chocolate chips (255 g)

1 tsp vanilla (5 ml)

candy canes or peppermints, optional.

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F (177 C).

Lay saltines out on a 10.5″ x 15.5″ (27 x 39 cm) stoneware jelly roll pan or other pan with a short lip around the sides.  If you do not use stoneware, line your pan with parchment or heavy duty foil before laying out the crackers.  If you don’t they will stick big time.

Put butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan on medium heat.  Melt completely and remove from heat; this takes 1-2 minutes.  Stir frequently, do not boil, and do not leave this on the heat too long or it will thicken and burn.

Add the vanilla extract to the butter and brown sugar mixture and pour over the saltines.

Put in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Remove, add chocolate chips and let them rest a moment.  You’ll see them turn glossy.  Spread them to cover the crackers. Sprinkle with crushed mints if desired (To crush: throw them in a zip-closed bag and smash them with a sturdy saute pan.).

To cool, remove them from the stoneware to either a large plastic container or lined cookie sheet (wax paper, parchment, or the glossy side of freezer paper all work well) and put it in the fridge.  I don’t recommend cooling first and then separating as they’ll stick together.

Enjoy!

 

Frosty the Fudgeman

Hi Blog!  I’ve missed you 😦  Let’s make some fudge shall we?  I have a recipe that was handed down from my Grandma to my Mom to me.  I’ve been making it since I was about 9 years old.  It’s quick, easy, creamy, and delicious.  Don’t have a candy thermometer?  No worries; you can still do this.

A word of caution.  While I started making this as a kid, please please please supervise closely if you are allowing your kid to make this.  I recommend making it yourself first, so you know what to expect.  Sugar burns are nasty.  Please be very, very careful. Also note, this pot is heavy when you pour it out; you’re pouring 3-1/2 pounds of fudge. Doesn’t sound like a lot of weight, but it sure feels it when you’re holding the pot in one hand and and scraping it out with the other.  Rest it on a hot mat if you need to.  And if you want seven pounds of fudge?  Don’t double it; make it twice.

Another word of caution.  It’s addictive 🙂

Here’s all you need:

Update: Be sure to check your labels to confirm all items are gluten-free if you are gluten intolerant!

semi-sweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate candy bars (It originally called for three 5-cent Hershey bars.  They’re a bit more expensive now :)), marshmallow creme, evaporated milk, and sugar:

oh, and a marble slab or plastic mold and some butter to coat.  If you don’t have these, then a cookie sheet or regular casserole dish will work just fine.

A candy thermometer will be handy to have, but is not an absolute necessity.  If you don’t have one, grab a clear glass and fill it with ice cold water.

Let’s talk candy cooking stages for a moment.  You’re going to put the milk and sugar into a large sauce pot and cook it for about ten minutes, bringing it to a stage of boiling called “soft ball” stage.  This is because when you drop a bit of this mixture into cold water, it will literally form a soft ball.  It will be 234 F (112 C) on your thermometer.  My thermometer says 240 F (116 C) is soft ball stage.  If yours does, too, ignore it or you’ll have grainy fudge.  Initially the milk and sugar mixture does nothing, and stays that way.  Then all of a sudden it decides it’s time to boil and and will look like this…

And it will rise. Fast.

See how it rose about an inch and is more golden colored?  Once it gets here, it will stay here a few minutes.  Watch the thermometer crepe up.  Again, if you don’t have a thermometer, just test your mixture.  If your water is ice cold and the mixture goes splat, it has not cooked enough.  Wait a minute and try again.  You’ll eventually see it form a ball.  Put your fingers in and feel it; it will be squishy.  If you cook it a bit too long, it will form a hard ball (hard ball stage) and if you cook it a lot too long you’ll eventually reach hard crack stage where the mixture will literally spin a hair in the cold water.  This is peanut brittle, not fudge.

Once you’ve reached softball stage, you simply remove it from the heat, add the chocolates and marshmallow creme, stir and poor onto your slab or into your mold.  I buttered my mold and added confectioner’s sugar for ease of release and to make it look like Frosty 🙂

Stover’s Fudge

Update: Be sure to check your labels to confirm all items are gluten-free if you are gluten intolerant!

4-1/2 c. (855 g) white sugar

1 lg can (12 oz, 359 ml) evaporated milk     [_not_ sweetened condensed milk]

1 lg package (12 oz, 340 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

3 milk chocolate bars [1.55 oz. (44 g) each for a total of 4.65 oz (132 g)]

1 jar marshmallow creme (7 oz, 198 g)

2 c. nuts, optional

Cook sugar and milk together until soft ball stage. (See notes above recipe for candy stages.)  Stir constantly or it will stick.  Remove from fire.  Add marshmallow creme, chocolate chips, chocolate bars, and nuts (if using).  Mix well and poor into buttered dishes.  Cool.

This cools really fast when you pour it onto a cool surface so don’t worry about it running over the edge of the slab.

To serve, I cut pieces as needed.  If you cut it in advance they’ll dry out.  For gift giving, cut off small sections and wrap in plastic wrap.

Enjoy!

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