Daring Baker Challenge August 2011 (kind of...): Peanut Butter Fudge

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at Chocoley offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

but I won't win any prizes with this winning recipe...

Our challenge this month was to make candies: one non-chocolate, and one enrobed in tempered chocolate. We were given many nice looking recipes to choose from, or allowed to use our own, but we were supposed to make at least two kinds. I didn't follow the directions. I actually had some chocolate that was previously tempered and now solidified from a long ago occasion - it was waiting in a glass dish to be used on something not requiring much chocolate. I even took the preliminary steps of cutting some of the marshmallows I made earlier in the month into petite cubes, thinking I would dunk them into the chocolate and a very quick homemade 'candy' would be done. (Maybe I would have even toasted the marshmallows and cooled them, and then dunked them into chocolate... maybe I will have to try that one day...) But then I recognized the heat of August and the business of preservation was not really conducive to chocolate coating anything. That, and I really need to cut down on my personal sugar consumption.

Enter the peanut butter:

VitaMix'ed. I still love this thing.

When I woke up this morning, I actually thought it was Daring Baker posting day, the 27th. This is what often happens to me since I rarely need to know the date for anything. Making one of the requirements for the challenge was actually the furthest thing from my mind, and then over breakfast I thought about commitments and how I hate to break them. I figured I could have an excuse to give out little packages of peanut butter fudge at a get-together I'm having over the weekend and then before I knew it, the peanut butter fudge was all but made. Using baking pantry staples, this delicious fudge can be ready for consumption about 1 hour and 20 minutes from when you decide to make it, and that includes 60 minutes of chilling time.

Being from Wisconsin, I like to think that I have a "one-up" on fudge. I was born in a highly touristic part of my state: The Northwoods, specifically Minocqua. We had fudge shops. (Plural.) Tourists would line up out the door, waiting for slabs of flavored specialty fudge, passing the time efficiently by watching the pretty girls through the window working some type of taffy winding machine, or spreading vats of sticky candy onto marble slabs to cool. We rarely bought any little white boxes of precious fudge, but were no strangers to this sweet confection. My Gram had an antique oval platter, cobalt blue, that was and still is known as the Fudge Plate. "That fudge plate is getting lonely..." is a phrase I grew up with, and nearly as fast as it was uttered, our whole family (except my Dad usually, and sometimes including my uncles) began scooping out spoonfuls as soon as it was rested to cool in the salt-buttered plate. We could never wait until it firmed up and it didn't matter. Gobs of sugary chocolate were well on their way through our digestive systems, and usually only a half platter remained long enough to cool completely into solid form.

So much of our family food memory revolves around fudge: straightening the rows or evening out the lines - because you just can leave a crooked line drawn in chocolate. (That is still true for me, by the way. I can't ever leave a cake or pie or fudge slab uneven...) That lucky one who's turn it was with the worn wooden spoon (that may or may not have tasted faintly of onions or garlic) to scrape the pot of the fudgey morsels still clinging to the sides. A good and intent scraper could very well end up on the long end of the stick with that scraping task.

All glorious fudge memories aside, I can not remember a single instance that we made or purchased peanut butter fudge. We always made chocolate fudge, my Gram would opt for maple if we spent the rare extra dollar or two to buy some, maple and walnuts being some of her favorite things. Peanut butter fudge always seemed too sweet, as if the argument for fudge could be made that it really isn't comprised of 80% sugar regardless of flavor. (My Dad never enjoyed fudge simply because of it's extreme sweetness until I made this recipe using dark bittersweet chocolate, it does seem considerably less sweet, and is probably my favorite fudge recipe currently. Since as you may have surmised, I'm all about not eating things too sweet.)

All things negative about peanut butter fudge said, I can now officially take them with a grain of salt. The Über-Sweetness of this particular peanut butter fudge is undeniable, but (if you can stop yourself from eating half the baking dish), it really is a delicious accomplishment. I feel a bit like Charlie Bucket, nibbling the tiniest corner of one of these cubes to let the sweetness permeate my mouth and transport me, and if mindful I can truly appreciate it's texture and peanutty nuance. If my real self takes control of my fleeting juvenile-literature-moment, I have to go and brush my teeth to make myself stop eating it.

Really, it is that delicious.

gifts.

The only things I did to alter the recipe as written was to add a pinch of salt when I stirred in the peanut butter to the bubbling butter and sugar mixture, and when I melted the butter initially, I used a pastry brush to brush a touch of it in the 8x8 glass baking dish. Don't be tempted to omit the vanilla. I felt like the 1 t. really made it.

Peanut Butter Fudge (via Daring Kitchen site)

• 1/2 cup (115g / 4oz.) Unsalted Butter
• 2 1/4 cups (450g / 16oz.) firmly packed Brown Sugar
• 1/2 cup (120ml) Milk
• 3/4 cup (200g / 7oz.) smooth Peanut Butter (I made my own, and added a pinch of salt)
  
• 1 teaspoon (5ml) Vanilla Extract
• 3 1/2 cups (425g / 15oz.) Confectioners' (Icing) Sugar

1. Place butter into a medium saucepan and melt it over medium heat.
2. Add brown sugar and milk, stirring.
3. Boil for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.
4. Remove from heat.
5. Mix in peanut butter and vanilla.
6. Place confectioners' sugar into a large mixing bowl.
7. Pour hot peanut butter mixture over confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth.
8. Pour fudge into an 8 by 8 inch (20cm by 20cm) pan.
9. Chill until firm, about 1 hour.
10. Cut into 1-inch (25 mm) squares.

I packaged up the pretty, square pieces, and kept all of the unsightly and uneven ones for myself. It's a hard life, I tell you.

Do please go and look at all of the lovely recipes on the the Daring Kitchen site for this month... had it not been so oppressively hot for most of the month, the passionfruit ones really caught my eye and would have been one I'd have made. While you're there, remember to check the Daring blogroll and peruse some of the no doubt lovely creations from those bloggers that can follow directions. I hope I'll be back on track next month.

Preservation by Any Means Possible (and... a Lahey Bread, if you are still keeping track)

I like to think of words in the English language, and how they look or "feel" like their spellings... my favorite examples: laugh, quiet, grumpy. When I see the word 'August' in type it evokes this feeling of exhaustion, of exhaling with a sigh, of brevity. In the Midwest, our most prolific season is August and the aforementioned descriptions sum it up well. Pretty much any vegetable that grows in our zone is on and ripe for the preservation, and while I don't preserve as much as some, I still feel that pang of tiredness. I wonder if I am doing as much as I can do, wondering if I am doing too much for the food-eating conundrum I find myself in (a.k.a. my picky boys).

Last weekend, the Kiddo and I spent time at my Parents' farm. My only food goal was finding a peck of jalapeno peppers. Last year's peppers were excruciatingly hot, so hot that I actually still have a number of jars leftover despite the near 3 pints of candied jalapenos I ingested myself. When considering my preserving tactics this Summer, I thought of an uncle - since I could justify doing more if I had someone with the fortitude to eat the last of the super hot peppers. And he must have a stomach of steel. Last Summer, I traded some canning for some upholstery work, and when my Mom gave him the peppers he ate almost half a jar immediately.

Finding jalapenos this year was more difficult, and after some hunting, we found a farm with them. I helped an Amish man pick a gallon pail full of mixed peppers. This was after a misunderstanding at a different farm that landed me a peck of crisp green bell peppers. Monday morning before leaving, 4 dozen corn appeared tidily bundled in a green mesh sack, the result of tasting some bi-color corn we got from another Amish neighbor on Saturday during our quest. It was the sweetest corn I've had this year, and now 10 1/2 lbs. are resting in the deep freeze.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, I decided before I left that I needed to make proper lacto-ferment crock pickles this year. This beautiful photo from Chiot's Run was what did it; after reading the post, I went down to the basement and brought up the crock my Mom gave me a year ago that belonged to my Gram. I re-washed it and sterilized it for fear of mold spores (my poisoned vinegar was in the basement) and then left it on my kitchen counter open to the air for the weekend. Tuesday, I picked up some pickling cucumbers from the farmer's market, exactly 5 lbs. when I weighed them.

I decided not to can vinegar pickles this year, but couldn't bear the thought that I wouldn't have any until next year so these traditional pickles are a welcome addition. So is the handsome crock on the floor of my kitchen.

hitchhiking caterpillar on the dill.

The recipe that Suzy at Chiot's Run used was from Linda Ziedrich's pickle book, which I do not have but intend to pick up soon. I followed the recipe, but I had no allspice. I may pick some up and add it after a trip to the co-op tomorrow... if I remember, that is. I also added just a few more hot chiles de arbol. I felt proud that my coriander seed was saved from my garden last year, I measured it out of an origami packet I made to conceal it.

my salad plate was exactly the right size to keep everything submerged.

Pickles done, I turned my attention to this gem of a recipe: lacto-fermented peppers from the Woodwife's Journal. At the farmer's market I also picked up some other green peppers of varying heats, poblanos, serranos, Aneheims, a few extra jalapenos since I was feeling a bit on the shy side with them. These are so delicious straight away, and I can only imagine they will get better with time. I had a few more alterations with this recipe since I was almost out of live cider vinegar (Bragg's, and I ordered another gallon today).

I eyeballed a half peck each of hot (green) mixed peppers and sweet bell peppers, but used only 1 1/3 c. of the cider vinegar and topped it off with plain white vinegar. I also used part olive oil and part grapeseed oil, and a few grinds of black pepper. Try to find Mexican oregano if you can, because that really makes these I think. They are the perfect kind of mild heat, slightly oily and herby, and just plain addicting. I had a half gallon jar and two quart jars, and already I'm wondering if I shouldn't do a second batch because I want everyone I know to try these. And unlike last year, the jalapenos are approachable.

The two larger projects out of the way, I turned my attention to these crazy, bright peppers. When I stood along this long row of mixed hot peppers of various types with an Amish man and picked these, he told me he planted them for the produce auction since their family doesn't much care for the super hot peppers. The auction draws both retailers and individual buyers, and many of the local Amish have gotten rather diverse in the things they grow to sell there. The most fascinating variety I thought were the tiny purple "ornamental" ones, which he assured me were edible, though he didn't remember the name. I bit into one and let my tongue discover the Scoville Heat Units. It was hot.

Last year, I remembered seeing this lacto-fermented hot sauce recipe and cataloged it. I grew a single plant of cayenne peppers and another of habanero, planning to make a smaller batch after they ripen. I may still do that, but meanwhile I used the whole lot that we picked for my bucket, 11 oz., to make a trial batch. It's fairly thick, bordering more on a salsa consistency and I'm actually not sure that I'll strain it. I have a week to think about it.

This isn't just hot. It's mind-numbingly hot. But it's fruity, and the heat doesn't last long which is kind of strange for something with all the visual warning of a traffic cone.

I saved all of the jalapenos, which worked out to exactly 3 lbs. (enough for one batch of candied jalapenos) for tomorrow and moved on to the corn. According to an old preserving book my Mom has, when blanching corn for freezing, you should boil for just as long as you soak in an ice bath - 4 minutes in the case of sweet corn. I filled up my sink with icy water and boiled 6 ears at a time. My rhythm was so efficient that before the next batch was done in the boiling pot, I had 6 of the drained ears sheared clean of kernels - in part to the bundt pan corn removal method I've been seeing around the Internet.

I crafted a "knife protector" out of a plastic lid, however. and it worked really well!

With all of the aroma of sweet corn in the air, no bread in the house, and a starter that had just recently emerged from refrigerated weekend slumber, I decided to tackle the long-lost and maybe somewhat forgotten task of making all of Jim Lahey's bread for what I affectionately coined The Lahey Project. I saved out 4 ears of corn, stripped them, and blended them smooth. Then I used my new favorite purchase, a nut milk bag, to drain out corn juice that was used for the liquid in the bread.

It rose, sweet and earthy and super sticky and I formed it, messily, into a ball. It rose for a couple more hours surrounded by large amounts of cornmeal to ward off some of the inevitable stickiness and when the time came to drop it into my pot, I of course slipped and mostly deflated it. It's been so long since I have done a no-knead bread, and forgot about the somewhat delicate nature of the risen dough. I baked it anyway. It was delicious. It may not be the most picturesque loaf, but I certainly got the gist of what flavors bread can take on when the liquid is replaced with juice.

So, August. It was midnight before I slipped into bed, finally finished my book, and then had trouble winding down into sleep mode. I love working this way, until I'm so tired I'm not really tired any more. It's all self-imposed now, which makes it feel so much more rewarding than when I made an hourly amount which never seemed to measure enough for the precious time I gave to others. (I'm not talking about you though, GOP...) The hot water bath will bubble with more hot peppers tomorrow and I'll continue to take stock and see what else I should be doing to ready myself for the days when things aren't growing and thriving. When August leaves us as quickly as the sigh that it feels like, and Fall stands proud and cold and begs you to turn on the oven.

The Olfactory Pleasures of Marshmallow.

I have been reading Molly Birnbaum's Season to Taste. It caught my eye on the new shelf at the library, and although it has taken me a shamefully long time to read it, it has caused me to really examine and be thankful for my sense of smell. She talks about the loss and gradual regaining of her sense of smell after an accident. At first it seemed that the scents that came back were related to her emotional state, either to happiness or anxiety. After a few years when it seemed she had regained almost all of what was lost, she discovered that she had trouble "labeling" scents when she smelled them. This in particular I have thought about a lot. When walking through the neighborhood after dinner tonight, I swear I smelled ketchup right behind the smell of a charcoal grill, a blistery hot dog blackened in spots. If I lost my sense of smell for a few years and then smelled this same scene again, would I recognize it the same? Could I put my finger on it?

The neighborhood stroll after dinner tonight was much needed since I made and torched kitchen s'mores for our dessert. This was the first time I have used my culinary torch since my Baked Alaska escapades one year ago, and as the marshmallow toasted, charred in places, the wonderful scent of sugar caramelization reminded me yet again of Molly's book. Charred marshmallow is singular, no other sweet when toasted smells the same, and I was shocked that this small act instantly transported me to a much younger self - the way that smells often do.

Instead of being fashionably late in food trends, I end up being so tardy that I feel that I am indeed starting it again. Wasn't everybody and their uncle making marshmallows a few years ago, before the French Macaroon and the Cupcake? I'm so late I'm afraid that I'm wishing I were the person that made marshmallow so popular to begin with.

In my mind, this may have been another Mollie: Mollie Weizenberg. I remember reading her article in Bon Appetit, which she used to do monthly at the time. (It was probably the main reason I kept my subscription as long as I did.) She knew she would marry a man who had made her marshmallows from scratch. After her eloquent account, it seemed like she had convinced everyone to make marshmallow, sticky variations appearing everywhere I looked. I can't say that I ever made marshmallows for the sake of making them. Since reading her story, I have made variations for cookies and for frostings, but never cut them into fat homemade squares with the sole intention of torching them in a bonfire.

homemade grahams.

The beauty of my kitchen life is that I never know what is going to happen from day to day. I have really stopped planning meals. This is so much better for my creativity, since I make what is available and turn it into what I have a taste for. I have a few staple things that usually appear weekly: some kind of taco, some kind of fermented condiment, sourdough concoction, but as for everything else it's up in the air. When the Kiddo and I decided to go out to the Farm this weekend, my Dad texted me to see if my urban boy would like to camp out with him. When I asked, he said enthusiastically "Yes! And we can eat marshmallows!" So with that statement, my personal marshmallow trend emerged. A day later, a batch of bouncy, white mallows in hand cut squares grace my counter. And, I see what all the fuss over homemade marshmallow was all about.

I used the recipe from Gourmet, via Smitten Kitchen, which was written about 10 years prior to Molly Weizenberg's "Fluff Piece". It's curious, that maybe trends are reinvented every decade - and maybe I'm just rutted in the half-life. The recipe uses more gelatin than I've ever used in a single recipe before: 2 T. plus 2 1/2 t. It softens in a half cup of water when the sugar mixture is coming up to temperature. I have to say that my heightened awareness of my olfactories made me wonder if I would enjoy these marshmallows, the gelatin swelled in the water and smelled animalistic, and not really in a good way. I actually tried to keep myself from noticing the gaminess as the 140 degree syrup was poured over the softened mass, I stirred with a wooden spoon to combine it before letting the KitchenAid have at it.

I had faith in the sugar content, and in the remainder of the vanilla bean stolen from the bottle of vanilla extract. I had used nearly all of the waning bottle in the graham crackers, and fortunately could pillage the precious seeds. I also added a teaspoon of almond extract, just to up the flavorant a bit in case the gelatin didn't tame itself in the fridge...

The marshmallows work at promised. I poured out a mass of sticky goo, and quickly spread it into a prepared pan with a silicone spatula. I did not touch it with my fingers. It hardened quickly as it cooled, leaving my whisk coated in spongy, sticky white but strangely melted off without effort when soaked for 5 minutes in soapy warm water. The whole process seemed easier than buying a bag of marshmallows to tell the truth, and even though I used corn syrup which was probably genetically modified, I comfort myself with the knowledge of a one week shelf life.

The flavor and texture of these marshmallows is perfect. They resist chewing and are sticky, but then give in and dissolve without coating your teeth. When eaten without smelling (which you can approximate by pinching your nose shut - I do this with almost everything after reading Molly's book), their sponginess is more pronounced, a foamy mouthful that registers as sweet. When eaten with a sense of smell, they are sweet but not too sweet, and the whole experience would remind you of eating a bag of Jet Puffed if they were consumed directly after being factory made. If you can call pure sugar "fresh", these are.

Though my jars of homemade components will be heading west on Friday, I couldn't wait that long to make a s'more. I had a small jar of ganache still in the fridge from a few weeks ago, and it is still good. I spread it over the grahams and then speared the mallows with bamboo skewers. I heated them gently with my torch, letting them catch fire so I could blow them out, noting the aroma of singed mallow sugar. Our open faced s'mores were more than plenty for dessert, so rich and elegant that it was a shame I didn't have more people over to share them with.

Will they taste even better outside in front of a fire? I'm pretty sure they will. When the nuance of fresh cut grass and nighttime dew, the smell of the dark and the country influence the sugar and cut it in two. What a privilege to have 5 senses, and what reminders to appreciate them!

A Short, but Complete, Story.

Every cook must have stories, tales that pop into mind during mundane kitchen tasks. These instances usually attack me when I'm least expecting it, flooding my mind with moving pictures of things that happened long before my birth - but things that have woven their magic into my psyche. The stories become my stories, I become a child of the Great Depression stretching the last of the sauce, weaving the fabric of the tales and changing the pattern into my own.

I have not a stitch of Italian ancestry, but this afternoon when I transferred what red sauce I made to a storage jar I thought of all the stories that I claim as mine. I heated my red pot with the olive oil in it, thin slivers of garlic heating up with the oil as Marcella Hazan recommends. Nearly every time I start a sauce, I do it her way to coax a silkier, less bitter hot garlic into being. I feel like I came to this country with my Husband and did not speak a word of English. That I stood in the supermarket looking at packaged chickens in plastic wrap and wondered at the lack of connection between these Americans and their food.

When I grated a peeled carrot into the pot, I remembered my longtime ex-boyfriend's mother, a tremendous cook and baker. She was not Italian either, but sweetened her sauce with carrots, and tamed the sweetness with a splash of red wine which bubbled up vinegary before she added her tomatoes. No matter what vegetables I try to sneak into my sauces these days, I add the carrot and red wine for her, thinking of all the meals that she shared with me over the years, the implements in my kitchen that came from her endless rummaging and thrifting, her generosity that still holds fast in my heart even though things were not to be with her son.

My sauce finished, I sliced and fried some eggplants cut into circles, wondering all the while if I could convince my Kiddo to eat it. I was not a picky eater, and neither were my two brothers. When one brother and I visited my Grandparents in the "city" (now, Stevens Point does not really seem so urban...) as small children, my Grandpa would try to coax us into finishing our breakfasts by telling us of the park bench in our bellies. I still see this cartoon bench deep in my stomach, a full glass of orange juice sitting there with a smile on it's face just next to a strip of wavy bacon, also smiling. Yes, the pancake is there too, the same silly smile plastered on his face. Hardly a breakfast goes by when I don't think of that time when I honestly believed that there was such a thing as a park bench in my belly, and that I shouldn't waste what is on my plate since the food already waiting on the bench will be lonely without company. I have already employed the story of the park bench, and I wonder if little eggplants with smiles on their faces will join the glass of milk and corn on the cob in my Kiddo's stomach when dinner emerges from the oven...

After assembling my Eggplant Parmesan, I used the ladle already in the pot to transfer the leftover sauce to a jar. After scraping most of the sauce in, a brief thought of washing the pot without scraping every last bit out crossed my mind. Did I really want to dirty a spatula to get those last tablespoons? The story that immediately came to mind was one that was told to me second hand by my Mom. When my Gram was newly married and living in Chicago, she went on a picnic lunch with my Grandfather. They brought hard cooked eggs, didn't eat them all and rather than pack them up, they left them in the woods. A day passed and they were hungry and remembered those eggs. They went back to see if they could find them. Now, my details of this story are fuzzy, but when it was first told to me I wondered, "Who goes to look for eggs that were left outside a day later?" "They were hungry, I guess..." I remember my Mom telling me.

I grabbed my spatula and scraped the pot, nearly a quarter cup of sauce appearing magically from the bottom and sides. A quarter cup I imagine my Depression Era Gram stretching into a meal somehow, and the portion I now remember to be thankful for.