2-Minute Quick Fudge

This rich, nutty 2-Minute Quick Fudge is so easy that children can make it all by themselves. Even better, its main ingredients are store cupboard and refrigerator staples: powdered sugar, cocoa powder, butter and milk. 

It’s perfect for slumber parties, unexpected midnight munchies and, especially important this time of year, it makes a great gift for neighbors and friends. Who doesn't like fudge?!

I miss the days when my daughters still lived at home and we’d have a fairly steady stream of overnight guests and sleepovers on the weekends. I was in my absolute element cooking and baking for a crowd. 

One of our favorite sleepover meals was homemade pizza. I’d make the dough and pizza sauce and set out all of the toppings. Each girl would get a ball of dough to spread out on a pan and top her own custom made pizza. It took awhile to make and bake them all so the pizza was both entertainment for part of the evening, and dinner. 

As they got older, I’d head off to my room to read after we ate, knowing that they were quite capable of baking up a pan of brownies and more on their own, if the munchies hit. The muted giggles and games and music from downstairs were joy to me. 

I originally created this recipe post for a sleepover theme blog event so I was determined to find a quick fudge recipe that children could make on their own with simple ingredients. No condensed milk or marshmallow fluff since a lot of folks don’t keep those in the cupboard. I didn’t want the stove involved either. Flames and unsupervised children should never mix. Unfortunately, most quick fudge recipes call for one or both those things. 

Until I found this one in my archives. I’d love to give credit where it’s due, but the source wasn’t in my notes. It did say that nuts were optional. I had scratched through Nuts to write Pecans. Because pecans are my favorite nut. And I added the mini M&Ms. 

The bottom line is, you can eat the base quick fudge all on its own. It’s perfectly chocolate-y and rich. Or you can add in whatever you like. Chopped candy bars, mint chips, peanut butter chips, mini marshmallows, other nuts? They’d all be excellent. 

2-Minute Quick Fudge

Technically, this does take just a bit longer than two minutes because you have to chop the pecans and measure all of your other ingredients out. It’s still super quick and worth it!  

Ingredients

1 lb or 450g powdered sugar

1/2 cup or 40g unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

1/2 cup or 113g butter 

1 tablespoon vanilla

1/2 cup or 57g chopped pecans, plus more for decoration, if desired

1/2 cup or 100g mini M&Ms, plus more for decoration, if desired

Method

Grease an 8 x 8 in or 20 x 20cm pan or line it with baking parchment across the bottom and up at least two opposing sides, so that the fudge can be lifted out of the pan by those ends. 

In a large microwavable mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, cocoa and salt in mixing bowl. 

Add milk and butter. Do not mix. 

Cook uncovered in a microwave oven on high for 2 minutes. Remove bowl from microwave and stir well to mix the ingredients into a lovely thick chocolate.

Add the vanilla, pecans and mini M&Ms.  Stir until blended. 

Pour or spoon the fudge into your prepared pan. 

Press it out evenly in the pan. 

Sprinkle on the extra mini M&Ms and pecans, if using. Press them down with a spoon so they stick into the fudge. 

If your kitchen is warm, you can put the pan in the freezer for 20 minutes to cool and set. My quartz countertop is cold this time of year so mine set up quickly without chilling. 

Cut into small squares with a sharp knife and serve. Store in an airtight container. 

Tip: If you are giving this fudge away as a gift, cut a piece of thick cardboard into a square. Cover it in foil and stack the pieces of fudge on top. Cover with cling film, ribbon optional. Voilà – a pretty gift package! 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes for holiday sweets and treats. Check out all the links below. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on a Farm and her able stand-in, Sue of Palatable Pastime. 

• Christmas Tree Peanut Butter Blossoms from Amy’s Cooking Adventures
• German Chocolate Caramel Bars from Palatable Pastime
• Homemade Jujube Jelly Sweets from Sneha’s Recipe
• Maritozzi from Culinary Cam
• Two-minute Quick Fudge from Food Lust People Love
• Vegan Air Fryer Churros from Cook with Renu

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle is a great seasonal party sweet and perfect for wrapping up to give as gifts for teachers, friends and coworkers. The crunchy pumpkin seeds toast and pop in the syrup as it cooks and caramelizes, flavoring the buttery brittle.

When my girls were quite young, we lived in a small oilfield town in Brazil where we were one of very few American families. Our neighborhood was just four or five blocks square, with the tiny little international school within its perimeter.

Halloween was not celebrated in Brazil, at least when we lived there, so if I wanted my daughters to experience that great American tradition as I had when I was little, it was up to me to organize it myself.

I started in early October by asking neighbors I knew to give out candy then I’d make a map of all the participating houses and pass them out at the beginning of the evening. 

Some participating houses had children so one parent would join the groups going from house to house, leaving someone at home to hand out candy. Others didn’t have kids but they got into the spirit with enthusiasm, decorating their front doors and more, to welcome the trick or treaters.

After trick or treating, everyone would come back to our house where we had decorated the backyard for a spooky Halloween party and set up a table with cupcakes, sandwiches, chips and punch. We’d bob for apples the old-fashioned way in a big basin of water, pass oranges or small balloons under chins and play other fun games. 

And, of course, the kids would sort out their candy, trading for their favorites and eating much of it in the process. It was a festival of sweetness and fun! Such a sugar rush! 

One of my favorite candies to make for a Halloween party was, and still is, peanut brittle. This week I made it seasonal, using pumpkin seeds to celebrate Halloween.

Your Halloween party guests will love it! Or make some as a gift for your favorite teacher or neighbor. Add a creepy chocolate spiderweb for decoration!

Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Like peanut brittle, pumpkin seeds brittle is simple to make but take the time ahead to butter your foil and put it in a heatproof pan before you start boiling the concoction, as per the instructions. I don't have photos of the in-between steps because there wasn't any time to stop to take a picture!

Ingredients

1 cup or 200g sugar 

1⁄2 cup or 120ml light corn syrup 

1⁄4 cup or 60ml water

1⁄2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 1⁄4 cups or 180g raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (not toasted) 

2 tablespoons butter, softened, plus more for greasing the foil lined pan

1 teaspoon baking soda

1⁄3 cup or 66g semi­sweet chocolate chips for spider web ­- optional

Method

To make the pumpkin seed brittle, first line a large pan with foil and grease the foil liberally with butter. Set aside.

In a heavy pot, heat the sugar, corn syrup, water and salt over a medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Separate out a tablespoon of the pumpkin seeds and set them aside.

Stir in the remaining pumpkin seeds.

Continue cooking, stirring frequently until the pumpkin seeds start popping and the liquid turns caramel colored.

If you use a candy thermometer, you are looking for a temperature of 300°F or 149°C. Alternatively, you can drop a small amount into very cold water. It’s ready when it separates out into hard and brittle threads.

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the butter and soda. The syrup will froth up but just keep stirring till the butter is melted.

Pour the bubbling pumpkin syrup into your prepared pan.

Holding the pan securely, shake it from side to side and front to back, tipping it carefully this way and that so the pumpkin seed brittle spreads out. Quickly sprinkle on the reserved pumpkin seeds and leave it to cool.

To make the creepy chocolate spider web, melt the chocolate chips with a few quick zaps in a microwave or in a double boiler.

Fill a piping bag fitted with a number 3 tip with the melted chocolate. Pipe on a spider web following these instructions here.

Set the Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle out on your party table whole, then break it into pieces with a little hammer to serve.

Enjoy! 

It's Sunday FunDay and since Halloween is nigh, we are sharing Halloween party treat recipes. Many thanks to our host, Sue of Palatable Pastime and her able helper, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out all the links below!

• Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle from Food Lust People Love
• Ghostly Candy Apple Concoction Bark by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Jack O’Lantern Cheese Bites by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Halloween Ghost Hardboiled Eggs by Sneha's Recipes
• Spider Web Pretzels by Amy’s Cooking Adventures

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

 

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German Applesauce Cake #BundtBakers

The tender crumb on this German Applesauce Cake reminds me of a buttery pound cake, but with raisins and pecans, making it perfect with a cup of tea. 

Whenever I see jars of applesauce on the grocery store shelves, I must confess that I wonder who is buying it. After all, applesauce has got to be the easy thing in the world to make. Just peel the apples, core, chop and cook down with a splash of lemon juice or water. Literally, that is the whole recipe and it doesn’t even take very long. 

The chopped apples turn to sauce in a matter of about 10 minutes or so. You can speed up the process by mashing them with a potato masher once they soften, if you are really in a hurry.  

Applesauce is a family favorite with roast pork at our house and sometimes even pork chops. The tart but naturally sweet applesauce complements the savory pork wonderful. If you haven’t tried that combination, please do! When we are in the UK, I use Bramley apples which are great for baking and cooking. If I am elsewhere, I use Granny Smiths.  

German Applesauce Cake

I made this cake using Simple Truth Organic Plant Based Egg Replacer. It’s a powder made from chia seeds and chickpeas aka garbanzo beans, specifically for recipes when eggs are a binding agent, for instance, baked goods and quick breads like pancakes or waffles. It's available from Kroger or online, if you are in the States. This recipe is adapted from one on My Patchwork Quilt. 

Ingredients

For the cake batter:

3/4 cup or 150g sugar 

1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon or 78g shortening plus extra for the pan

2 medium eggs (or equivalent amount egg replacer)

1 1/8 cups or 290g homemade or store-bought applesauce

3/4 cup or 110g raisins

1/2 cup or 60g chopped pecans

1 1/2 cups or 187g flour, plus extra for the pan and raisins

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon water

For the cinnamon glaze:

1/3 cup or 41g powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 – 1  1/2 teaspoons water

Method 

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Grease and flour a 10-cup Bundt pan.

With electric beaters or in the bowl of your stand mixer, cream shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs (or egg replacement) and beat until light.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon and salt.

Add applesauce and dissolved baking soda alternately with dry ingredients.

Toss the raisins with a sprinkle of flour then fold in the raisins and chopped pecans.

Spoon batter into your prepared pan.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until golden and a wooden skewer comes out clean. If it starts browning too much before it's baked through, you can cover the top lightly with foil. 

Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes then turn the cake out to cool completely before glazing. 

To make the glaze, mix the powdered sugar and cinnamon. Add water gradually till you reach drizzling consistency. 

Drizzle the cake with the cinnamon glaze. I also gave mine an extra pinch of cinnamon sprinkled on top. Because apples and cinnamon are best friends. 

Slice to serve.

Enjoy!

Amazingly, it’s already the third Thursday of the month – this summer is zipping by! – so it’s time for my Bundt Baker friends to share their recipes. Today’s theme is applesauce! Many thanks to Sneha of Sneha’s Recipe for the theme and our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm for her behind the scenes work. Check out the recipes links below.

• All That’s Left Are The Crumbs: Amish Applesauce Bundt Cake
• Patyco Candybar: Applesauce Bundt with Caramel Glaze
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Applesauce Spice Cake
• Magical Ingredients: Caramel Coconut Apple Bundt Cake
• Passion Kneaded : Cinnamon Walnut Applesauce Bundt
• Food Lust People Love: German Applesauce Cake with Cinnamon Glaze

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

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Lighter Lemon Pound Cake #BundtBakers

This lighter lemon pound cake has less butter the original version but with the sour cream and lemon, you won’t miss it at all. Made with Swerve, everyone can enjoy it! For a little extra innocent richness, serve it with a dollop of lightly sweetened low fat Greek yogurt and berries. 

For this month’s Bundt Bakers, our host chose “angel or devil” as the theme.  I interpreted this as healthy cake (relatively speaking) vs. decadent cake so I put on my thinking cap and started to Google search lighter pound cake. 

I came across all sorts of “lighter” pound cakes! Apparently it’s a thing. Who knew? Many of them claimed to be lighter but had a whole cup of butter and an equal amount of sugar. Umm, no. That’s regular pound cake. 

Lighter Lemon Pound Cake

I used “brown sugar” Swerve to bake these cakes to make them more diabetic friendly and I baked the batter in a Nordic Ware Duet pan, which has a capacity of 5 cups. It’s perfect for making one cake to keep and one to share. Which is the best “lighten up” option! Sharing is caring. If you bake yours in a 6-cup Bundt pan, it might need just a little longer in the oven. This recipe was adapted from one on Just a Pinch. 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup or 180g cake flour, plus extra for pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 tablespoons butter, softened, plus extra for pan

3/4 cup, packed, or 75g Swerve or light brown sugar

1/2 cup or 120g sour cream

Zest 1 lemon 

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 egg, at room temperature

1 egg white, at room temperature

2 tablespoons milk

Recommended for serving: 

Greek yogurt lightly sweetened with Swerve or sugar

Fresh berries

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 5- or 6-cup Bundt pan by greasing it with butter and coating it with flour.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl and set aside.

In another bowl, beat the butter and Swerve/sugar until creamy and lighter in color.

Add sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, egg,  egg white and milk to the butter mixture. 

Beat 2 minutes on high speed.

Add flour mixture. 

Beat on lowest speed, no more than 10 seconds, until just combined.

Spoon the cake batter into your prepared Bundt pans.

Place on one rack above middle in the oven. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Cool for about 7 minutes on a wire rack then use a wooden skewer to loosen the sides and middle then turn the cakes out of the pan. Cool completely. 

This cake is wonderful plain or if you want to fancy it up, with a dollop of Greek yogurt, sweetened with a little more Swerve or sugar, topped with fresh berries. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the third Thursday of the month so welcome to Bundt Bakers! As mentioned above, our host chose angel or devil as our theme. Check out how our bakers interpreted that theme below. Many thanks to Rebekah of Making Miracles for hosting!

• Sneha’s Recipe: Black & White Pound Bundt
• Passion Kneaded: Chocolate Overload Bundt Cake
• Patyco Candybar: Dark Angel Bundt Cake
• Magical Ingredients: Devil's Black Forest Bundt Cake
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Devil's Bundt Cake
• All That's Left Are The Crumbs: Devil's Food Cake Bundt with Chili Caramel Sauce 
• Food Lust People Love: Lighter Lemon Pound Cake
• Making Miracles: The Devil's Mini Bundt Cakes 

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers, can be found on our home page.

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Chocolat Chaud - French Hot Chocolate

This Chocolat Chaud aka French Hot Chocolate is made the old-fashioned way with hot milk and rich dark 85% cocoa chocolate. Add sugar or don't, to taste. In France, many don't add sugar but I need a little!

Years ago when we lived in Paris, it was a special treat to go out to a café for a café crème or chocolat chaud. In fact, we had a running joke about finding the most expensive cup of coffee. I think the winner was a café on the Champs-Élysées, natch, that charged me 35 francs for a small cup of coffee, which would have been about $10. In 1992, it seemed a small fortune. 

The upshot, as I’m sure you can imagine, was that we made coffee and hot chocolate at home at a lot. 

Chocolat Chaud - French Hot Chocolate

You can find chocolate powder in France but if you want to make traditional chocolat chaud, you need a good quality chocolate bar that is at least 70 percent cocoa. It’s also best made with whole milk. 

Ingredients

2 cups or 480ml whole milk

4.4 oz or 125g bittersweet chocolate, best-quality

2 tablespoons demerara or turbinado sugar or to taste

Method

Chop the chocolate roughly. (This chocolate was an Aldi buy. Great chocolate at a reasonable price.)

In a small pot, over a low flame, heat the milk until it just starts to steam. 

Remove the pot from the stove and add in the chopped chocolate. 

Whisk until the chocolate is completely melted. 

Add sugar to taste or let everyone add sugar to their own cups. Serve immediately or return the hot chocolate to the stove and cook for a few more minutes for thicker hot chocolate. This hot chocolate can also be cooled then warmed again to serve. 

Serve warm in demitasse cups, or small coffee or tea cups. It's so lovely, rich and thick that the sugar doesn't really sink until you stir!

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and we are celebrating National Hot Chocolate Day (which is tomorrow, 31 January) by sharing our favorite recipes. Check out the links below. Many thanks to our host, Camilla from Culinary Adventures with Camilla and her friendly helper, Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm.

• Cheese in Your Hot Chocolate? Yep. Chocolate con Queso from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Chocolat Chaud - French Hot Chocolate from Food Lust People Love
• Cinnamon Chilli Hot chocolate from Sizzling Tastebuds
• Homemade Hot Chocolate Bombs from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Hot Chocolate Cookies from Making Miracles
• Mexican Hot Chocolate from Mayuri’s Jikoni 
• Nutella Hot Chocolate from Sneha's Recipe
• Salted Caramel Espresso Hot Cocoa (Salted Caramel Mocha) from Amy’s Cooking Adventures
• Spicy Hot Chocolate from The Mad Scientist’s Kitchen

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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