Foodie Friday -- Lemon Fudge X2

I found a recipe for Key Lime fudge and I changed it around to make the lemon fudge. The shortbread crust is my idea. Both crusts tasted good, but they are both too thick and tough, so this is the reduced version of the recipe. The first lemon fudge was slightly too creamy and less ‘fudgy’ in texture, so I tried to use a boiled sugar type of fudge. The results were adequate, but the recipe has been tweaked to reflect the changes.

If you don’t want to make this, then by all means come by my house as I have plenty of fudge in the freezer! Or you could simply go online and buy someone else’s stuff.

Lemon Fudge with Shortbread Crust

Crust:

¾ cup flour
1/3 cups sugar
1 Tbls lemon zest
1 Tbls. lemon juice (one small lemon)
5 Tbls. butter.

Fudge:

20 oz. white chocolate, coarsely chopped
14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
¼ tsp. sea salt
3 Tbls. lemon zest
1/3 cup lemon juice (2-3 small lemons)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix first three ingredients together. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Cut butter into pieces and add to flour mixture. Blend with fingers until crust resembles a coarse meal. Press evenly into prepared 9 x 9 pan, lined with aluminum foil and sprayed with cooking spray. Bake in oven for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Prepare filling

Finely chop white chocolate. Place chocolate in microwave safe bowl. Add sweetened condensed milk and salt. Microwave chocolate in 30-45 second increments, mixing after each interval, until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add zest and juice. Carefully blend in juice until incorporated. Pour fudge on top of cooled crust. Smooth top. Refrigerate 2-3 hours until firm.

Hints & suggestions:

·         Use food processor to chop chocolate

·         Zest lemon before juicing it

·         Use Baker’s (grocery store $3 for 6 oz) or Ghirardelli white chocolate (found at Sam’s Club 2.5 lbs for @$8) in 2012.

·         Set out at room temp for about 1 hour prior to cutting. Crust might be tough, but it does soften up.

Cooked Lemon Fudge with Shortbread Crust

Crust:

¾ cup flour
1/3 cups sugar
2 Tbls. corn starch
1 Tbls lemon zest
1 Tbls. lemon juice (one small lemon)
6 Tbls. butter.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix first four ingredients together. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Cut butter into pieces and add to flour mixture. Blend with fingers until crust resembles a coarse meal. Press evenly into prepared 9 x 9 pan, lined with aluminum foil and sprayed with cooking spray. Bake in oven for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Fudge:

Zest from 4 lemons (1/2 cup zest and 2/3 cup juice)
3 cups sugar
½ cup heavy cream
20 oz. white chocolate, chopped fine

Place first 3 ingredients into medium saucepan and heat over medium heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Place candy thermometer into pan. Add white chocolate and stir until melted. Heat fudge until it reaches 240 degrees F. (firm ball stage). Remove from heat and pour into heat resistant glass bowl. Cool until temperature reaches 110-115 degrees, about 1 hour. Beat with mixer for 5-10 minutes or until mixture firms. Pour over cooled crust spread evenly. Chill in refrigerator 3-4 hours.

Hints & suggestions:

·         I never could get it to firm up and gave up about 10 minutes. Don't worry about it if it stays liquidy.

·         White chocolate isn’t really chocolate, it’s cocoa butter and it doesn’t always play by the same rules

·         White chocolate tends to be a little ‘softer’ than regular chocolate, resulting in a creamier and stickier fudge.

 

Enjoy, Peeps!

 

Foodie Friday -- MAG's Decadent Fudge

 

I’ve been on the hunt for an Old Fashioned Fudge recipe for quite some time now. I’ve tasted loads of fudge over the years and most beaten fudge recipes are grainy and not flavorful. So why do people attempt to make it? Sorry, but attempt is the key word here. So many fails have been passed off as fudge.

Well, all I seem to find is some version of what I call Cheater’s Fudge. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a perfectly wonderful recipe--quick and easy to prepare. But I wanted to go “candy thermometer” old school to see what all the fuss was about. The problem I ran across was the recipes that did involve cooked sugar couldn’t agree on the basic temperature, and WHY on earth did you have to let it cool before you beat it?

Of course, I figured it out.

The one ingredient you have to have as a maker of traditional fudge is PATIENCE. Yes, my friends, just like when make caramel you have to wait for the right moment to act. There is a valid reason for letting it cool down.

When you make fudge, the reason you have to wait to beat the mixture is all about chemistry. You know, the class you slept through in high school and college.

If you beat the fudge when it is too hot, the sugar particles will reform and attract more sugar particles to form larger particles until it cools enough to stop the process. This is one reason for the grainy, crunchiness of less than-stellar-fudge. If you wait until the mixture has cooled enough then the sugar particles will stay small, resulting in a smooth texture.

I found a recipe and then proceeded to change it up for real world usage.

Here we go:

MAG’s Decadent Fudge

3 cups sugar

1 Tbls. Hershey’s cocoa powder
Large pinch of sea salt
3 Tbls. orange blossom honey
1 cup heavy cream
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate (Baker’s), finely chopped
2 tsp. vanilla extract (Madagascar Bourbon)
4 Tbls. chilled butter, cubed

Line 8 X 8 pan with foil, spray with butter-flavored cooking spray.  Set aside. In heavy sauce pan, whisk sugar, cocoa powder and salt together, and place over medium heat. Add honey and cream, stirring until smooth. Add chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted and sugar dissolved. Time for the candy thermometer! Increase heat to high, and boil mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage at 236 degrees. You can stir the mixture, but DO NOT SCRAP THE SIDES (sugar crystals and all that jazz).

Pour into glass bowl. Dot top with cubed butter and vanilla, and let cool about 45 minutes. Using a clean candy thermometer make sure the temperature is between 110-120 degrees.  Using a hand mixer, beat until everything is incorporated and increase speed. Beat fudge until it loses its shiny cake batter look and turns chunky-ish, about 3-5 minutes. DO NOT OVERBEAT.

Scrap fudge into prepared pan. Press flat with hands. Score the top into 1-inch squares with pastry scrape or knife. Let cool.

Sample the fudge remaining on the beaters. Groan with delight.

 

Hints and suggestions:

·         Sorry, Martha Stewart, but most people can’t afford Valrhona or Callebaut chocolate. They simply have Hershey’s, Nestles or Baker’s chocolate in their cabinet. I used Valrhona once in a recipe, not worth the $$.

·         Martha was all hard-core about buttering parchment paper, too. Love you, Martha, but really? Aluminum foil sprayed with butter Pam works just as well!

·         And not a fan of light corn syrup either when I have honey on hand. I’m a serious fan of orange blossom honey!

·         And don’t hand chop the chocolate if you have a food processor, just whir it around until the largest chocolate pieces are about the size of a pea.

·         Score the outside edges off first before you make the squares, then all the pieces look good!

 

Enjoy, Peeps!

 

 

FOODIE FRIDAY -- Peppermint Fudge

Yes, I know it's not Friday, but instead, Saturday. I wanted to go ahead and post this easy fudge recipe in case anyone wanted to make it for the holidays.

While internet surfing, I found a recipe for peppermint fudge. The picture looked awesome: the bottom layer was a chocolate with pecans and the top layer was white dotted with peppermint pieces. The ingredients were a little on the weird side--cream cheese and powdered sugar, plus other stuff. I decided to make it--and it made an incredible mess--with powdered sugar flying everywhere! The next morning, I started cutting it into bite-sized pieces. It was soft and gooshy AND it tasted disturbingly like powdered sugar. Oh, the chocolate layer didn't even taste like chocolate, probably because it was cocoa powder. And I have yet to taste a chocolate flavor in anything made from cocoa powder. After wrapping about 25 pieces, I decided to toss the whole mess. Yep, down the disposal . . . with the water and blades running, well, not the wrapped pieces, they went into the garbage can.  

And I started all over again. This time I was INVENTING a recipe while I made it. Since this was a double-layered fudge, it was thick in a 9 x 9 pan. It might work in a little larger pan. If you only want to make the peppermint layer, then a 9 x 9 pan would be perfect.

Yes, this is a variation of what I fondly call ‘cheater’s fudge’.

Peppermint Fudge

Chocolate layer:

18 oz. milk chocolate chips, or semi-sweet for a stronger chocolate

1 can sweetened condensed milk
Dash salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans

Peppermint layer:

18 oz. white chocolate

1 can sweetened condensed milk
Dash salt
1 tsp peppermint extract (I also used 8 drops of peppermint oil) use more if needed
6 crushed candy canes

Line 9 x 9 pan with foil.

Melt chocolate, condensed milk and salt in heavy saucepan. Stirring constantly until chocolate is melted. Remove from heat and add vanilla and nuts. Mix together and pour into prepared pan. Chill 1 hour.

Melt white chocolate, sweetened condensed milk and salt in heavy saucepan until chocolate is melted. Remove from heat; add peppermint extract, adjusting for desired intensity. Stir in crushed candy canes.

Remove pan from refrigerator, press down to flatten top and edges. Pour peppermint mixture over chocolate layer. Chill until firm. About 3-4 hours. Pull out of pan using foil and remove foil from fudge. Cut fudge into bite-sized pieces and serve.

 Enjoy!