Adventures in fudge
For most people who do holiday cooking, the holiday season means that they will be making roast turkey/ham, some favorite side dishes, a pie or two, and maybe some Christmas cookies. For me, it’s fudge season. Specifically peanut butter fudge. I have made four batches of peanut butter fudge so far and I will be making another batch today (Mom has requested a batch for the New Year’s Eve party that she will be attending).
But this year, I decided that I needed to expand my horizons. What inspired me? On a recent trip down to Vincennes, my sister, my mother and I stopped at a roadside fruit stand/gas station that sold homemade fudge. I sampled their maple walnut fudge and was not impressed. My sister sampled their peanut butter fudge and said that it was pitiful, not anywhere near as good as mine (of course). My mother was happy with her chocolate fudge. I was looking over their offerings and got to thinking how I would go about making these fudges myself. And so, I decided to make 3 new kinds of fudge this year: chocolate, maple walnut and pumpkin.
For the chocolate fudge, I decided that the recipe that I use for peanut butter fudge would not be a good start, so I opened up my Betty Crocker Cookbook and used their recipe for chocolate fudge. It was a success, although it was a lot more work than peanut butter fudge. Mom really loved it. I think I had 3 or 4 pieces, I gave 4 pieces away, and Mom ate the rest.
My next experiment was maple walnut fudge. The maple walnut fudge had a great taste, but it turned out a little grainy. I think that is because I used a grinder to grind up the walnuts. I will use a blender next time and make sure I get it to a creamy texture. I will say, the flavor of this fudge was fabulous, so I will definitely do it again. I made it the same way as the peanut butter fudge, but I substituted walnut paste for the peanut butter and used maple flavoring.
The pumpkin fudge wasn’t quite as successful. The flavor was good, but the fudge never set properly. I made it the same way as the peanut butter fudge, but I used a can of pumpkin pie filling in place of peanut butter (I squeezed as much liquid out as I could beforehand by using a clean dish towel – I need to get cheese clothe). I also cooked it 10 degrees higher than I normally do (I had tried to make this fudge before and it did not set then either). It still turned out to be pumpkin sludge, not pumpkin fudge. The good news is, it makes a nice topping for ice cream and tastes great on toast. I am determined to succeed with this recipe, so next time I will cook it even longer. I will not stop until I succeed!
I also made a batch of cookies.
Tags: daily life
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