Over the past week, the Little Mister and I have been enjoying our annual holiday fudge-making extravaganza. Usually, the “extravaganza” consists of a few batches of chocolate fudge, some with nuts, some without, nothing too crazy or extravagant. But this year, we went wild and decided to throw pumpkin fudge and peanut butter fudge into the mix.
I took all of the recipes, but one, from Allrecipes.com. Although I never never never never believe anyone who tells me I don’t need a candy thermometer. Bah! I live by the candy thermometer and can attribute nearly all of my fudge failures to missing the highly important 236-degree mark (aka softball stage).
The pumpkin was almost perfect. Look at it, doesn’t it look yummy?? The only thing missing from the recipe is nutmeg & cloves (1/4 tsp of each) to perk up the pumpkin flavor. A few other reviewers suggested adding extra white chocolate chips for more creaminess… I haven’t tried that, but I might. As is, though, it’s pretty darned good.
The peanut butter fudge was a little trickier. I found this recipe that calls itself the Easiest Peanut Butter Fudge… and more than 500 people seemed to agree. I, however, am not one of them. My attempt at the “easiest” fudge was a total disaster — my first real fudge disaster in fact. Totally unsalvageable. Straight to the trash.
So, I went with a more modest, less self-aggrandizing recipe and it came out pretty darned good. Very creamy — this is the first recipe I’ve ever tried that called for the marshmallow cream to be added after boiling to softball stage, and it definitely changes the texture. When I try this one again, I think I’m going to add the marshmallow to the boiled ingredients, adding only the peanut butter & vanilla at the end.
As for the chocolate fudge, we’re still not on speaking terms. More to come on that…
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