Culinary Misadventures--Holiday Edition

I'm appalled, Gentle Reader, by how long it's been since I added a food-related post. Then again, I haven't been doing much experimenting in the kitchen lately, but the onslaught of the holidays has changed that.

Oh Fudge!
A few weeks ago, I received a light cranberry-walnut fudge recipe from the weekly "Light Dessert of the Week" email I've subscribed to from TasteofHome.com. (If you're looking for low-fat, low-calorie dessert recipes, I recommend signing up for it.) I'm not a fan of walnuts, nor can I say I'm a fan of cranberries, and I hadn't planned to make fudge this year, but the recipe just seemed too easy and its nutritional content seemed, well, doable for me, so I thought I'd give it a shot. The yield was also a good fit with my plans to give some folks (my massage therapist, who keeps me running along with the nice front desk guy at the gym who greets me every morning and our neighbors, who've given us a small means of appearing not be total asocial assholes) small tokens of my gratitude and appreciate this holiday season.

Cranberry Fudge2 C (12 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 C light corn syrup
1/2 C confectioners' sugar
1/4 C reduced-fat evaporated milk
1 t vanilla extract
1 package (6 oz.) dried cranberries
1/3 C chopped walnuts

1. Line a 9" square pan with foil. Coat the foil with cooking spray, then set aside.
   
2. In a saucepan, combine the chocolate chips and corn syrup. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the chips are melted. Remove from heat.
   
3. Stir in the confectioners' sugar, milk and vanilla. Beat with a wooden spoon until thickened and glossy (about 5 min.).
   
4. Stir in the cranberries and walnuts.
   
5. Spread the goo into the pan, then refrigerate until the fudge is firm.
   
6. To cut, grasp the foil liner, lift the fudge from the pan, then discard the foil. Cut the fudge into 1" squares and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Yield: 81 servings

Nutritional Info
I'm not sure how entirely accurate this info is. Those nuts have some protein, I'm sure, as does the evaporate milk, I suspect. Nevertheless, here's what the recipe shows:

Calories: 36
Fat: 2 g
Sat fat: 1 g
Na: 3 mg
Carbs: 6 g
Fiber: 0 g
Protein: 0 g

The Faudie's Futzings
I used fat-free evaporated milk because I don't think a reduced-fat variety is available. At least I've only ever seen regular and fat-free varieties.

(Speaking of which, what ever happened to Milnot? I grew up knowing Milnot, not evaporated milk, but I can't find it around here. PET, sure. Carnation, you bet. Milnot? Nope.)

I also didn't use a wooden spoon to beat up my fudge to make it thick and glossy. I achieved thick and glossy using my favorite silicon rubber scraper/spoon thing, which I used so I wouldn't lose too much of the stuff to stickage to utensils. A nonstick saucepan helps with that too. I hate waste and I hate the temptation of cleaning up (i.e., licking out) bowls, spoons, etc. after the cooking's done.

Oh, and I didn't have enough walnuts on hand, so I used pecans. I honestly don't taste too much of a difference between those two types of nuts, and I don't have quite the near-anaphylactic reaction to walnuts that I have to pecans, so I figured the presence of pecans was a bonus deterrent for me!

But I was wrong. This fudge is damn tasty and waaaay too simple to make.

And, as I discovered the day after making my first batch of this recipe, damn easy to modify. I was struck by inspiration, Gentle Reader, and futzed with the original to create my own peppermint fudge recipe.

The Faudie's Quick and Easy Peppermint Fudge2 C (12 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 C light corn syrup
1/2 C confectioners' sugar
1/4 C reduced-fat evaporated milk
1 t peppermint extract
1/3 to 1/2 C crushed peppermint candy pieces
Additional crushed peppermint candy pieces for topping

1. Line a 9" square pan with foil. Coat the foil with cooking spray, then set aside.
   
2. In a saucepan, combine the chocolate chips and corn syrup. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the chips are melted. Remove from heat.
   
3. Stir in the confectioners' sugar, milk and peppermint extract. Beat until thicken and glossy (about 5 min.).
   
4. Stir in the peppermint pieces.
   
5. Spread the goo into the pan and sprinkle with leftover peppermint candy pieces, if so desired. Refrigerate until the fudge is firm.
   
6. To cut, grasp the foil liner, lift the fudge from the pan, then discard the foil. Cut the fudge into 1" squares and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Yield: 81 servings

As you can see from the recipe, I didn't include any nuts because, well, I don't like them that much, I wasn't sure what nut might go well with peppermint and I didn't want some nut detracting from the peppermint. Chocolate and peppermint is a winning combination, if you ask me, and I don't like anything competing for my taste buds' attention when I'm eating them paired up.

That said, if you want to throw in some nuts, go for it. I was thinking the other day that slivered almonds might be a nice addition. I don't mind almonds. I like cashews too, but I think they'd be too...oily? Rich?

The sprinkling of peppermint pieces on top is completely optional. I crunched up some leftover peppermint ribbon candy the boy received once (and soon thereafter forgot about--that's just the way he is), and I wasn't sure how strongly it might contribute to the peppermint flavor when I stirred it into the fudge itself. Plus I was concerned that I hadn't added enough when I stirred in the third-cup and a handful more: I wanted eaters to know they were consuming fudge with peppermint pieces inside, and I was concerned the fudge's thickness was concealing the pieces. So I threw some on top to better communicate to eaters that the fudge had peppermint pieces inside. Makes perfect sense, right?

Once I started cutting up the fudge, I realized that the pieces I'd stirred in were indeed large enough to be detected. Was the garnish all for naught? No, not if you ask me. I think the sprinkling adds a little bit extra visual stimulation. Plus I got rid of more candy, and I'm always glad to use ingredients instead of trashing them. That's wasteful, and I don't like waste.


A Cherished Childhood Memory Revisited
When I was in the first or second grade (pretty sure it was the second grade), the denizens of Aline-Cleo Elementary School contributed recipes (two apiece) for a cookbook that kids could then present to parents for Christmas. I seem to recall my elder sister contributed Mum's recipe for Parker house rolls (a family favorite that she made all too seldom for our tastes), but I can't for the life of me remember what I added. Mum's chocolate sheet cake recipe? Maybe. Or maybe it was the recipe for her no-bake cookies.

Anywho, I seem to recall finding in that book a recipe for cornflakes and marshmallow holly treats that we made that Christmas. Or maybe Mum found the recipe through some other means--I can't honestly say for sure, but in my memory*, the making 'o the cookbook and the making 'o the cornflakes and marshmallow holly treats are somehow connected.

The reason these treats stand out in my memory is that I grew up in a household free of Rice Krispies treats. Mum never made them. Marshmallow creme was reserved for fudge, and marshmallows were for the whipped cream and marshmallow salad she made for Turkey Day and Christmas. (To this day, nothing beats a chunk of pineapple coated in whipped cream made from whipping cream--no Cool Whip crap, thank you very much.) And we just didn't eat Rice Krispies either. But combining corn flakes with marshmallow was close enough to Rice Krispies, and adding green food color to the mix was just...well, pure bliss for a seemingly deprived kid.

Flash forward a quarter-century or so later, and you'll find The Faudie with a box of generic corn flakes that's less than half full and facing two weeks of being stuck with a kiddo who's out of school for the holidays. What does she do, Gentle Reader? She tracks down the recipe for the cornflake and marshmallow holly treats and decides to try to give her own kid a special memory.

I already had some cinnamon imperials (left over from the cake I made for the boy's birthday in February), but I was a little low on marshmallows (although I recalled the recipe that Mum had used marshmallow creme, but perhaps she, being far more experienced and wiser about ingredient substitutions, replaced the marshmallows that recipe might have called for with marshmallow creme). Finding a recipe was easy enough. I actually found too many of them, but I settled on one I thought the boy and I could manage. Some of the recipes I found online called for shaping the final product into wreaths, which I don't recall in the recipe Mum and I used waaay back when. Back then, we just made things that sorta looked like holly boughs. But, hey, we're all modern and shit, so why not try to shape them?

Christmas Holly Treats44 large marshmallows
1 stick of butter
1 1/2 t green food coloring
1 t vanilla
4 C corn flakes

1. Melt the marshmallows and butter in a saucepan over low heat.
   
2. Add the food coloring and vanilla.
   
3. Fold in the corn flakes.
   
4. Use a spoon to drop the holly on a greased cookie sheet. Add a few red hot candies to each holly leaf.

Yield: 30 to 36, depending on how your holly grows

Nutritional Info
Sorry, the recipe did not include nutritional info. They're not the best things you can eat, nor are they the worst.

The Faudie's Futzings
I changed all of two things in this recipe:

• I used light Blue Bonnet.
  
• I only used one teaspoon of green food coloring because, damn, 1.5 teaspoons is a hell of a lot of food coloring.

I don't know if the use of the light butter screwed me over or if the age of my corn flakes (I bought the box in late spring or early summer and didn't have them in a Ziplock), but these things are chewy in a bad way, if you know what I mean. I recall those treats from waaay back being more crisp and sweeter too (see footnote).

And sticky...but not sticky. When we started out, I told the boys they could shape the wreaths and had them spray their hands with nonstick cooking spray to prevent the green flakes from sticking to their hands as they worked. Well, that was all for naught, for when I attempted to demonstrate how to shape a ball of green marshmallow and flake goo into a wreath, the damn stuff just fell apart. So I just put globs of the stuff on two cookie sheets draped with wax paper, and then the boys placed the cinnamon imperials on top to complete the holly bough effect.

Last But Not Least....

Would it be the holidays without some chocolate-dipped pretzels? I think that's the universe's answer to no-brainer gifts to relatives or friends who live some distance away whom you don't want to clutter with crap they don't need. Not that anyone really needs chocolate-dipped pretzels, but they exist anyway.

This year, the boy helped me make some for his teacher. Not that the boy doesn't care for his teacher a lot. I thought the pretzels would be something nice he could give her (in addition to the snowman's head mug we'd acquired at Bath & Body Works) that he could actually help make. And the boy loves sprinkles.


And here they are in all their chocolate-coated, sprinkled glory. The boy's sprinkling skills are not as mad as his piping skills, but that's fine. It's the thought that counts, plus I didn't have to yell at him not to touch the pretzels after his hands had been down his pants, up his nose, all over the cats, etc. That's what really counts this time of year--and all year at that.

*As I write this post, my memory dredges up something that makes me think perhaps we found the recipe on the back of a box of Frosted Flakes, which is one of the few cereals Mum bought for us every now and then. Perhaps that explains why I remember the holly treats being sweeter and crunchier than how our treats turned out here in 2008. Gotta love a good shellac on a cereal flake, right? Hmmm....