Christmas Fudge - who wants some ?

Homemade fudge can be SO easy and versatile to make - and makes a lovely gift at any time of the year.

It's no secret - I LOVE CHRISTMAS ! I love the smells of the spices and dried fruits, the colours and seasons cheer. It's even more special now that I've got a cheeky little boy to share it with. It's children and excitement and bringing of families together that make Christmas what it is to me.

This Christmas fudge is simply divine. A rich dark chocolate fudge base, full of spice, dried fruits and homemade apple brandy liquer. The top part is a white chocolate fudge laden with ground almonds and topped with flaked almonds. It's like Christmas cake without the cake. Gloriously creamy and smooth. It's not crumbly and it's not chewy (apart from the fruit)

Of late, I've barely had any spare time which is why blog posts have been so scarce. Actually - I've had ZERO spare time. There is not a day this week when I have been in bed before 3.30am. Too much work to be done... Pre Christmas orders are just crazy and the amount of emails to do, packing, paperwork etc is extraodinary. If you have been missing my blog posts, I do apologise. However, at the moment priority is to try and get orders out the door at speed so everyone can get baking and crafting.

Well - I started making this batch of fudge about 1.30am this morning. Mainly as a gift for a neighbour. I think it's a combined sorry and thank you in one !

Blackie ; one of our pet chickens; decided to wander 1/4 of a mile down the road and take up residence with an elderly couple..The elderly man found out that she belonged to us and came to let me know. Blackie is normally the friendliest little thing and you can literally walk over and pick her up. Not in the neighbours' garden....

The man had tried chasing her round the garden with a leaf rake to chase her out. He'd also tried throwing a tarpaulin over her. Poor Blackie was petrified. Every time I went down to try and catch her - she'd leg it at warp speed. The garden was full of dense shrubbery patches and laden trees of rosy apples. It was very secluded being totally surrounded by 40ft high pine trees on three sides. I tried stealth. I tried foor. We tried cornering her and we tried a big fishing net. Couldn't get remotely close.

Blackie wasn't daft. She was roosting at night in the pine trees and had learnt how to climb ! The minute a human entered the garden, Blackie went up the tree. Up, up, up - so high up that instead of a big black hen, she looked like a little black speck.

It's been a good two months that Blackie has been away. But finally the old man and his wife managed to catch blackie with a big trap and a long fishing line that went across the garden and in the dining room window. Trap baited, I believe they waited several days for hours at a time on poor Blackie being tempted by their lure.

I'll take some fudge round tomorrow morning and hopefully make some more "Peace". They seem ok about it - though they didn't really want a chicken as a long term lodger.

RECIPE FOR BASIC FOOLPROOF FUDGE

125g salted butter

12 normal sized marshmallows

3/4 cup of evaporated milk

2 cups of sugar

180g chocolate (use white for light and dark for chocolate - I never use milk for this !)

up to 1 cup of dried fruit / nuts / chopped biscuits

Basically - that's it. Put the first 4 ingredients in a large pot. It's best in a non stick pan. Ordinary is fine - but the bottom has a tendancy to catch slightly. Cook over a medium heat, stirring. As soon as it comes to the boil - set your timer for exactly 5 minutes. Keep stirring and when the 5 mins are up, remove from the heat. DO BOIL FOR EXACTLY 5 MINS. Less than 4.30mins and it won't set. More than 5 mins and it starts to get grainy.

Add in the chocolate - either broken or chopped and stir in until it melts. Quickly, stir in your add ins and then pour into our silicone 8" x 8" fudge pan. Leave to cool. I like to refridgerate overnight before cutting into nice chunky squares. It will keep a good 2 > 3 weeks in an air tight box in the fridge. The 8" square silicone bakeware mould holds one fudge batch properly (just over 1/2 full)

 If using a tin, grease very very very well. You'll still curse, swear and perhaps have to pour boiling water over the base to get this stuff out. I really DO recommend silicone for making fudge. No greasing etc - just pour the hot fudge straight in.

This recipe is VERY versatile and I start with my basic recipe above and then adapt.

CHRISTMAS FUDGE

Base layer - add 2tsp mixed spice to the 4 top ingredients. Instead of 3/4 a cup of evaporated milk, I used about 1/2 the amount in evaporated milk and the other 1/2 in my homemade apple brandy liquer. I mixed in dark belgian chocolate, with sultanas and cherries

We've got these fab new moulds. Actually - I've had these ones for a while but just have not got

round to putting them on the website. I originally intended them for small soap loaves - but they are fantastic for a deep layered fudge or small slicing bar type layer cakes - ideal for a couple to share over a couple of days. I've just recently started using these before promoting them and have already fallen for them big time.

I used four moulds for this double fudge project. I filled the first 3 moulds half full with the dark chocolate fudge base layer.

My top fudge layer was the basic fudge recipe with a teaspoon of Sainsbury's Taste The Difference French Almond extract. I added white chocolate to this and 1/2 a cup of ground almonds. It's smooth, distinctly almondy and much better than marzipan !

I poured some of the top almond fudge layer over each dark chocolate, boozy spiced bottom layer and quickly pressed on lots of slivered almonds to the top. Top layer is only about 1/2 the thickness of my bottom layer. The fourth empty mould was 3/4 filled with the remaining almond fudge.

After cooling, I turned out the fudge bars and sliced it. Each slice was cut again into three fingers. It looks just like Christmas cake and has some powerful kick of the dark chocolate, smooth almond top, apple brandy, spices and fruits.

It looks really pretty boxed up in homemade boxes. I love to make little peep through windows with acetate as a sneak preview of what is inside.

Blackie is happy to be home and once more eating from our hands and following at our heels. I for one am very thankful. Hopefully the neighbours are none the worse for their experience ! Sorry....

Sarah-Jane Nash - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - silicone bakeware specialist cook shop, November 2010

Spiced Beetroot & Orange Chutney

I found the recipe for this in BBC Good Food Magazine late last year and made a batch then. It was so good that I immediately made another and used up the last of my home grown beetroot.

A batch is fairly large and makes 8 x 8oz jars - plus about 1/2 a jar to spare. This year, I've purposely grown extra beetroot simply to make this. It went down a bomb in hampers last Christmas. It's gorgeous with biscuits and cheese or cold meat and fresh bread - or with salads. I think we went through about 4 jars when visiting my mum's last Christmas holidays in under a week !

I modified the recipe a bit to suit what I had available. It worked so well, I've contined to do so.

1200g raw beetroot, peeled and diced into small pieced
300g raw carrots, peeled and diced
3 onions , chopped
3 medium bramley cooking apples
zest and juice 3 oranges
2 tbsp white or yellow mustard seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp ground cloves
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

700ml cider apple vinegar
700g granulated sugar

Cook all of the above in a very large pot or maslin pan until juices are reduced and beetroot tender. I think it took about an hour. Bottle into sterilised jars.... I used 8.

I made one batch a day or two before I made the caramels and have never got round to posting the photos or recipe. If you like beetroot, you'll adore this. I think this is my favourite way of eating beetroot ever. My husband isn't a fan of the stuff. He's away camping tomorrow, so dinner for me may just have to be some homemade crackers with cheese and this glorious, heavenly beetroot chutney.

Sarah-Jane Nash - silicone bakeware http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ / wood burning stoves from http://www.naturalheating.co.uk/

Orange & Cardamom Syrup Soaked Brioche Buns - POST FOR LISA

Lisa emailed me a couple of days ago, looking for a small hearts silicone mould. The question was if this mould was going to produce a bun of adequate size to make Valentine Warner's recipe for Orangey Honey Buns.

I'd never heard of the recipe, so went searching for it and also found this one at British Larder. The photos for this one were more inspiring, so I thought I'd have a go and find out. I think the little buns look seriously cute in the mini canelle mould  or larger version of canneles.

The recipe was easy. First of all to make the dough. I started this in the food mixer, but the volume of dough was so little that the foodmixer and dough hook wasn't really working. I therefore got on with the bowl and a wooden spoon.

You can see here that the dough is very loose - almost like a cake batter. Needed a bit more mixing after this, but it wasn't too far away.

Spoon the dough into the silicone moulds to half fill each cell and set aside until doubled in size. The dough made 12 little hearts and 12 little roses.

There is absolutely no requirement to grease or flour your moulds with this recipe.

Silicone moulds are non stick and ever so easy to use. There is however a rule. If the sugar content is really high or greater than the fat content, grease and flour them. If sugar content is low or good bit less than the fat content - you shouldn't need to bother. They work EXACTLY like non stick tins. The same stuff that will stick to a traditional non stick tin will stick to silicone.

I never grease or flour for pastry or bread, chocolate, fudge, brownies etc.. Many cake recipes do need greasing and flouring. Once used to them, you'll be able to look at the recipe ingredients and automatically know if you need to grease them. If it's a really ornate mould with loads of detail and I'm making cakes, I like to grease and flour lightly anyway to make sure I don't damage the detail when releasing.

As these are just small - be careful on cooking time. I put minie in the over for 5 mins, but 4 would have been plenty. To be honest, I don't think the fact they were a little over done spoiled them - given they were to soak in copious amounts of sugar syrup.

Here is the sugar syrup after boiling for 5 mins. Instead of 400ml of water and 100ml of orange juice, I used 300ml water and 200mm juice. There is star anise, cinnamon, cloves and lemon peel in there. To be honest, I think the alchohol used in Valentine Warner's recipe really is needed. These were nice without, but a boozy kick would take them to a different level.

After baking the buns and making the syrup, you put the buns into a 1litre jar sterilised jar and pour in the hot syrup. I used 2 x 500ml jars instead of one big one. Next time, I'd use 3 jars and 50% more syrup, as I wasted about 6 or 7 buns and also cramped too many into each jar. It's AMAZING just how much these little buns swell in the syrup - so don't forget to leave them more expansion room than I did !

The photo above shows theem just bottled. I actually sterilised the jars in my halogen oven whilst I made the syrup and was so easy ! I'll definately use my halogen cooker / oven for sterilising all my jars in future as it's so quick and easy - plus saves putting the normal oven on if I'm only making jam.

After bottling, these little sugary sweet buns have to sit to mature and swell in the syrup for at least 6 hours. By that time, you'll be itching to open them and the syrup level will have dropped about 1/2 way down the jar. These would make a super Christmas gift. VW says that they keep for a month in the fridge. The other recipe says a week. I'd be surprised if they last that long !

Next time I make them, I would :

make 50% more syrup

use 3 x 500ml jars

boil the syrup a minute or two longer to make it a tiny bit thicker

Add a good glug of booze !

Other than that, these were a great success :-)

Sarah-Jane - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/  - July 2010