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[morgynleri]

... *takes a deep breath*

Life is better when the alchemy of sugar, cocoa, and butter is applied. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth or perfectly homogenous. It can be a lumpy double batch of microwave fudge dotted with kernals of sugar where the cocoa didn't mix in well, but the butter soaked in nicely. But. Fudge.

(and if the alchemy is furthered by additions of eggs and flour to make brownies, or by smashed into pieces nuts, that does not suck either. For now, I have ~2 pounds of delicious fudge and while I will share the recipe, this bowl of it is entirely mine.)

2-minute Microwave Fudge

Ingredients:

1 pound powdered sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/4 cup cream
8 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Equipment:

microwave
large bowl
spoon
maybe a fork
measure cup

Instructions:

Combine sugar and cocoa and salt. Sift if you want a more homogenous mix, otherwise with a spoon or fork until it looks well-mixed.

Measure your cream (or milk) and vanilla in the measure cup before adding to the dry ingredients, they'll distribute more evenly that way.

Mix, but don't worry if a lot of the sugar/cocoa mix is still dry.

Put butter on top.

Put in microwave for two minutes on high.

Stir softened melty butter in and stir until smoothish. Some of it won't incorporate immediately. Some of it may not incorporate at all.

You can then put it in the fridge for an hour or freezer for half an hour, and let it cool quicker. Or you can have a bowl of delicious hot fudge to nom on until it cools, and periodically remix the butter in, and it will eventually all incorporate. It will by lumpy, but it will be very tasty.

Comments

[zero_pixel_count]

:o wow that's quick
(thinking of my equivalent where you literally stand there mixing it for like ten minutes after all the sugar-temperature-related faffing... mind you that is technically tablet I suppose. I like the texture. But I also don't make it often, partly because of the mixing but mostly because it calls for condensed milk and then you have the rest of the can left over which is a pain.)
I know chocolate fudge is default fudge in your neck of the woods, but does it also come in non-chocolate varieties?

[morgynleri]

I haven't experimented with anything, but I suspect that anything that comes in a powder can be substituted for the cocoa with some experimenting to make sure the flavor comes out decent. The recipe that I use did not actually provide any suggestions for non-chocolate fudge done the same way. Granted, it also called for milk instead of cream, and I don't think they had the high-quality butter I tend to use in mind, either. Experimenting with a base recipe is always a useful thing.

And for substitution experiments, start with a 1-for-1 substitution of powdered flavoring agent, and adjust for taste and texture as needed. You might want to reduce the butter a bit for something high-fat like peanut butter powder. Also, it may be worth lightly toasting things that have a higher moisture content for a powder, like ground nuts, just to drive off some of the moisture.

... I have ground hazelnuts and may run an experiment with them and this recipe just because hazelnuts are delicious. Once I have powdered sugar again, since the last bag of it is now all chocolate fudge. :)

(I know there are some people who wouldn't consider this fudge because it's not cooked to a certain temperature on a candy thermometer and is not shelf-stable. But it's easy to make when spoons are short, having to put it back in the fridge or freezer periodically makes it last longer, and it sufficiently approximates the texture of more energy-intensive fudge that I'm happy.)

[zero_pixel_count]

I may well give that a go at some point :) I like the hazelnut idea as well, that does sound tasty.

[morgynleri]

I have run the experiment, in so much as it is now in the fridge waiting for me to nom down the making-sure-things-scale-down bowl of chocolate fudge. :)

The before-butter mix comes out damper and stickier than the normal recipe. After butter, the butter takes longer to incorporate, and it may benefit from a smidge less butter than the standard. I'll see how things are when I pull the batch from the fridge.

I did a 1/4 recipe, and both the ingredients and the time in the microwave scale down, though the ingredients scale proportionally, and the time scales differently. (45sec in my microwave for 1/4 recipe, and the butter was utterly molten. I suspect if I'd done 30sec, it would have worked fine and it's entirely possible that 20sec would have done the work for the butter.)

Edit: I... can't taste anything but the sugar. And I'm not sure if it's because I'm really sensitive to the taste of sugar or if the hazelnuts simply don't have enough oomph of flavor to do a 1-for-1 substitution. I may have to up the hazelnut part of the flavor-to-sugar ratio.

After I find out if I can feed the experimental results to dad, because I can't eat this first test batch. :(

[zero_pixel_count]

Oh, that's a shame :(

[morgynleri]

Dad was willing to try the experiment, and he can taste the hazelnuts, so the conclusion is that the amount of hazelnut will have to be increased to get it taste of hazelnuts more than sugar. I am planning to try another small batch later today or tomorrow, and will double the amount of hazelnuts in it (which shouldn't cause a problem with things setting up properly).

*crosses fingers that it does the trick*

[morgynleri]

And update to the hazelnut experiment #2!

Hazelnut is a 2-to-1 replacement for cocoa.

Ingredient modifications:

instead of 1/2 cup cocoa, use 1 cup hazelnut flour
instead of 1/4 cup cream and 1 tablespoon vanilla, use 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon apple cider of the non-alcoholic variety (or unfiltered apple juice)

(I have two more experiments in mind, though one is going to be interesting to attempt. Coconut is probably a similar replacement scheme for hazelnuts, but I'll stick to the cream and vanilla for the liquid. And maple syrup, which I'm not at all sure how that's going to turn out, but I'll feed experimental results to mom. Dad also suggested that seeing how fudge flavored with cardamom does, though that's an adjustement in flavoring agent the opposite direction from hazelnuts and coconut, since spices can go a long way.)

[zero_pixel_count]

Oooh, I like your dad's thinking there. I could go for a cardamom-coffee fudge myself.

[damont]

Nom nom nom... (not on your bowl of the stuff, of course, not that I could even attempt to do so anyway)