Fudge

photo by Jonah Rosenberg

FUDGE 

gluten-free, with dairy-free and nut-free variations

adapted from Sunbutter by My Little Blue Heron

Easy to make, chocolatey, rich, satisfying and scrumptious, this creamy confection keeps well, is great for kids and adults .. in time for Passover (not macaroons!), Easter and will be a satisfying nosh for the upcoming impeachment hearings!

Adjust this recipe .. to your taste and diet: make yours with cocoa or cacao, vegan and nut-free, vegan and nutty, buttery and nut-free or pull out those stops and make it chocolatey, buttery and nutty. 

If you're using cocoa, choose a good quality dark one. I like Valhrona from France. I buy it (in bulk) on Amazon. You can find this and other excellent brands at very good markets. If high end cocoa doesn't appeal to you, pick up some Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa – it’s easy to find, and it's good. Alternatively, use raw cacao. Cacao is what our neighbors and friends from Mexico use for molé sauce.

Navitas Naturals is a great choice:  

Cacao'll quell chocolate cravings whilst supplying you with important nutrients like magnesium and iron.

(oh) Fudge keeps "forever" in the fridge. You can freeze it, but it's not going to last that long.

Nut allergies?, use sunflower butter. Buy “Sunbutter”, or make it in your Vitamix. Buy roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds. (Trader Joe’s is a great resource.) It's so easy: throw them in your Vitamix and use that tamper thing. Make any nut butter for this recipe!: almond, hazelnut, cashew or peanut butter. Be sure to buy roasted and unsalted nuts. Make sure your nuts are fresh. Expired nuts are bitter and should be discarded. For obvious reasons, making your own is always your best choice. Of all the nut butters, peanut butter (a legume butter) will lend a strong flavor to your fudge (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.)

MLBH truc: Store opened nuts in the freezer, and use them as soon as possible because they begin to taste like the freezer pretty quickly. You can toast unused nuts in the oven at 350º F. until they're just slightly toasted (the oils will surface). Cool them completely and store them in a glass jar in a cool pantry. Use them for eating, baking, and for sprinkling on salads and veggies. 

Be creative: swirl some raspberry or strawberry jam thru the fudge before you put in in the fridge. If you're making this for kids, melt some marshmallows (or be lazy and use Fluff).  Mix in some cocoa nibs or chocolate bits, chopped nuts or dried fruit. Candy some orange rind and lay a piece on each square. Use liquor instead of extract…try Frangelico, Grand Marnier or coffee liquor. I infused my hazelnut fudge with Frangelico and decorated it with candied violets. (You can candy your own violet petals by brushing them with egg white and sprinkling them with sugar and letting them dry, or you can order them online.) I bought mine at Kalustyan's in NYC. You won't find them in their online catalogue, but if you call them, they may be available.

Are you leading a dairy-free life? Easy: use coconut oil, but use refined coconut oil. Refined coconut oil won’t dominate the confection, and you'll decide what layers of taste you want without coconut masking all other flavors. Refined coconut oil is pretty much odorless and doesn't readily taste of coconut. In the U.S., I like Spectrum brand.

Vitacost.com is a great online market. If you’re not already familiar with this resource, do check it out: great products, competitive pricing, and their house brand is terrific, and much less pricey (super fine rice flours – and yes, refined coconut oil!) Good to know: excellent customer service. Any issues? They're good eggs.

MLBH truc: Sift your 10X (powdered sugar) and cocoa twice: first separately, then together. Fudge umami guaranteed.

peace and love,

jane

photo courtesy of Jonah Rosenberg

Fudge

Prepare:

Lightly spray and line: a quarter sheet pan, or a small cake pan (8x8 or smaller), or a small loaf pan, with parchment or non-stick foil, leaving ends hanging over two ends of pan, enabling you to lift fudge from pan for cutting.

Vanilla powder is recommended for certified GF baking.  

Ingredients:

¼ c. unsalted butter or refined coconut oil

1/3 c./100 ml. milk or culinary coconut milk, “lite” or regular/nondairy milk

2 tsp vanilla extract or ½ tsp. vanilla powder or liquor/flavoring of choice

4 ½ c./196 g. 10X (powdered sugar), sifted

½ c./46g. cocoa powder or raw cacao powder, sifted

¼ to ½ tsp. salt

½ c. sunflower or nut butter of choice

optional additions: cocoa nibs, chopped chocolate, jam, coconut, marshmallow, chopped nuts, dried fruit...

Procedure: 

1. Sift together the 10X and cocoa/cacao, and salt. Set aside.

2. Measure sunflower/nut butter. Set aside.

3. Measure milk/coconut/nondairy milk. Set aside.

4. In a large saucepan, melt butter/coconut oil.

5. Stirring, with a wooden spoon, add sugar/cocoa mixture, a little bit at a time, until completely   
    blended.

6. Fold in sunflower or nut butter.

7. Fold in optional ingredients.

8. Using a spatula, transfer to prepared pan, smoothing the top with a spatula or knife.

9. Cover with a piece of parchment or waxed paper and refrigerate until firm.

10. Lift from pan and using a sharp knife, cut to desired shape and size. Cut all or leave some
      and cut "on demand".

11. Keep fudge well wrapped in a covered container in the fridge. 

Vegan Nut Butter Cookies (with variations!)

Vegan Nut Butter Cookies
(With Variations!)

Thumbprint variation!

This recipe came my way from a lovely blog I subscribe to called Goodness Is.

I chose to share this with you for several reasons. One was because I'd never baked cookies without eggs. Have you? The other, because having just had shoulder surgery, I don't have full range of use of my right wing now. This is a recipe I could produce without my right arm!

So, grateful to not have to crack an egg with one hand (yes, I can), and after reading the fine print on the pain pills, I've not only concluded that my Kitchen Aid isn't heavy machinery but that because its name is Kitchen Aid, it has been added as an adjunct to my physical therapy protocol.

With a skeletal crew, Blue Heron Kitchen is open operating!

My friend Rick (of Rick's Chrain fame), took one bite of these and said they'd be great without the chocolate chips. The cookie part, he thought was great. My neighbors, who have been helping me out during this needy time, and who have a toddler, really loved them, and immediately asked for the recipe. They loved the chocolate chips. What I'm not crazy about is the 'look' of these. The finish is a little anemic. Maybe if you dip them in something like toasted coconut or ground nuts, they'd look prettier. (I suppose an egg wash is out of the question.)

By now, you've probably figured out that I'm not a vegan. I wouldn't publish this recipe if they weren't seriously delicious. They're knockouts.

Don't be discouraged by the oat flour or spelt flour ingredients. First, you can buy these products easily at any good health conscious market. Bob's Red Mill sells these flours online, you can buy them at Fairway markets if you live in the NY metro area, or go to a good health food store. I'm turning to markets other than Whole Foods. My local Whole Foods is gross. It's crowded, poorly stocked, prices are stupid, staff is friendly and mostly vapid and basically unknowledgeable. Whole Foods should act their pricetag, not their preservative size.

What's important is that you understand the gluten profile of these flours: Oat flour is low in gluten. Spelt is fairly low in gluten. So, you can substitute, if necessary. Try other low gluten flours: cake flour can be a good substitute for the oat flour. Try whole wheat pastry flour and white cake flour if these less common flours aren't readily available or you just don't want to purchase them. The nice thing about the Bob's Red Mill flours is that they come in small bags. You keep them in the fridge and you don't feel like you've got five pounds of something you'll never use again.

Nut butters: I used almond butter because I had more in the house than peanut butter. I ground it myself at the supermarket. You don't have much choice over the texture, but you know what's in it and that it's fresh. If you use peanut butter, they'll taste more of peanut butter, which isn't a bad thing. Smooth will give you a different (my preference) product than chunky. Salty  butters would be fun. I'd omit the salt in the recipe and add a little more chocolate to balance the salt. Yum. A great variation on this are thumbprint cookies! For these, I use peanut butter and my favorite jam. 

If you're allergic to nuts, try sunflower seed butter or tahini. But if you use tahini, the tahini taste may dominate. If you do, please let me know!

I wrote about coconut oil in my plain cake recipe. I'm still not entirely sure about this fat, but I still have a jar of it. It's sweet and very delicious; and if you like the scent and taste of coconut, you'll like using it. For years, coconut oil was slammed and buried as one of the worst possible fats - it would dig you an early grave. I'm waiting for fois gras to be released from prison.

Vegan Nut Butter Cookies
(With variations)

Adapted from Goodness Is by Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

3/4 cup whole-wheat spelt flour

3/4 cup of oat flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup peanut or almond butter (or nut or 'not nut' butter of choice), smooth or chunky, but smooth will give you a better 'bound' cookie

1/3  cup pure maple syrup, or treacle (Lyle's Golden), or a combination or the two

2 tablespoons of coconut oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

optional: 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips (or chopped dark chocolate)

here are a few variations: 

PB & J!: make them into thumbprints! (I would omit the chocolate chips, but you can leave them in and have an pb/j and chocolate orgy!) Roll them into balls and make an indentation in the center of each one. Place about 1/8 of a tsp. of your favorite jam in the center. 

omit chips and substitute chopped nuts of the same variety of the nut butter you used 

play around with extracts and decrease vanilla and add a small amount (1/4 tsp. almond extract)

add some chopped up dried fruit, such as apricots or dried cherries!

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. and line a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with parchment paper, silpat , or oil the pan (remember, these are vegan, so don't cheat and use butter)

2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt and set aside.

3. In another bowl (or in the bowl of your electric mixer), combine nut butter, coconut oil, maple syrup (or treacle - I mixed the two and loved the result. You could probably use brown rice syrup too. I haven't tried honey.), extract and mix for several minutes until well-combined.

4. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until just incorporated. Dump in chocolate chips (or other additions) and fold in by hand.

5. Using rounds teaspoons or a small cookie scoop, space them about an inch apart on the cookie sheet. Flatten slightly with your hand (just a little bit!)

6. Bake for about 10-12 minutes (I baked them for 10 minutes). If you bake them longer, they'll be dry.

7. Transfer to a rack to cool. 

Yield 16-20 cookies.

Warm, with a glass of milk, these will make your eyes roll into your head. Wrapped, they'll stay moist for several days. You can freeze them, but they probably won't make it to the freezer.

My "leftie" vegan cookies