Tag Archives: rum

Chocolate Rum Walnut ‘Fudge’

Posted on by
Reply

Screening: The Addams Family, 1991

finished 'fudge'

Supplies:
microwave
microwave safe bowl
8in square pan buttered or lined w/parchment paper
measuring cups/spoons
Ingredients:
butter for pan if buttering
1 (12oz) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 (14oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1/8 c rum (or amaretto, coffee liqueur)
3/4 c walnuts (halves and pieces)

ingredients

line square pan with parchment paper. pour chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk in microwave safe bowl. measure out rum and walnuts.

microwave chips and milk on high for 1 min 30 sec, remove and stir. put back in and microwave for 1 min 30 sec more. even though for me the chips and milk combined and mixed into a smooth consistency i put it back in for a second heating hoping that would help the fudge firm up. mix in the rum until combined. mix in nuts.

cooling

pour mixture into buttered or parchment lined pan, again make sure when you are pouring that the mixture doesn’t flow over the parchment lining, easy to prevent so long as you are monitoring. let cool – at room temp! – for at least an hour. apparently putting fudge to cool in the fridge produces a grainy consistency so plan accordingly if you are making the fudge last minute for an event/gift.

noms

(attempt to) cut into squares. serve with white chocolate fudge failure #1 topping.

Lessons Learned:

  • the fudge STILL takes longer to harden and is softer than i had anticipated. honestly it doesn’t hold up well enough to cut and serve in a social setting because the heat from your hands warms up the chocolate and it starts to melt over everything.
  • i haven’t given up on fudge yet, i will master this beast.

Review: people seem to love fudge and this is a really sweet boozy nutty version which i think will be an appreciative addition to an office party setting – IF it actually held up. because it really still seems too soft for me to even feel right about touting it as fudge, i have a feeling i will be putting this batch into a jar and calling ‘topping’ as i did with the white chocolate attempt.

White Chocolate Rum Walnut Topping

Posted on by
Reply

Screening: Twilight Zone, black and white episodes

white chocolate rum walnut topping

Supplies:
microwave
microwave safe bowl
8in square pan buttered or lined w/parchment paper
measuring cups/spoons
Ingredients:
butter for pan if buttering
1 (12oz) package white chocolate chips
1 (14oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 c rum (or amaretto, coffee liqueur)
3/4 c walnuts (halves and pieces)

ingredients

line square pan with parchment paper. pour chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk in microwave safe bowl. measure out rum and walnuts.

microwave chips and milk on high for 1 min 30 sec, remove and stir. for me the chips and milk combined and mixed into a smooth consistency so i did not have to return it to the microwave to heat it up any more. mix in the rum until combined. mix in nuts.

cooling

i poured my mixture into a parchment lined pan (my friend still has my proper pan following the divinity disaster so i’ve been relying on disposable ones…) because i was still under the assumption that it would harden up into fudge – NOT TRUE. make sure when you are pouring that the mixture doesn’t flow over the parchment lining, easy to prevent so long as you are monitoring. let cool.

this is the point at which i discovered my fudge was still super runny and plan b, c, or d’s would need to be employed. i put the ‘fudge’ into the freezer for a while and still no luck.

noms

since i have made hot fudge topping in the past with great success, i figured that this kind of had the same look and feel and would make a good stand in. i/gift recipients could then come up with ideas of ways to use the (still delicious) confection as a topping to all sorts of treats. that decided, i spooned the final product into a jar, slapped a label on it and called it a day.

Lessons Learned:

  • the fudge takes longer to harden and is softer than i had anticipated. it is possible that i added too much rum (shocking assumption i know) but truth be told i stuck to the 1/4 c measurement so maybe the recipe was at fault with this one. were i to make this again i would definitely use less.
  • this recipe does not for a fudge make. period. end of story.

Review: confession - i actually dislike fudge, and dislike white chocolate even more. i decided to make this confection though because it is one of the easiest recipes that i have come across in my scouring of things to make, and it avoids having to mess with boiling sugar or a candy thermometer. it is super quick to throw together and does not require vigilant attention to detail.

all this said, however, it did not deliver on the promised fudge final product. i substituted white chocolate chips for semi-sweet so i also thought that might have been my error, but as my next attempt proves this has nothing to do with the failure. i would have rather attempted a more involved recipe were it to guarantee that i’d wind up with actual fudge.

Chocolate Rum Balls

Posted on by
Reply

Soundtrack: chatting with a friend

finished chocolate rum balls

Supplies:
8 in square pan
measuring cups/spoons
small saucepan
heatproof silicone spatula
blender/food processor/handheld blender (i used a handheld)
Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 cups semisweet choc chips - divided
1/4 c sour cream
1 Tbs honey
1/4 tsp salt
scant 1 c ground graham crackers
1/2 c confectioners sugar
scant 1/2 c ground nuts (i used peanut/almond mix just cause)
1/4 c melted butter
1/4 c rum

measure out honey, sour cream, salt (i combined the salt in with the sour cream), and 1 cup chocolate chips

somehow i forgot to take a pic of this next step!! i’m blaming good conversation with an even better friend

combine ingredients in small pan and melt over low heat. pour into 8 inch pan (honestly this could have just been poured into a freezer safe bowl). let freeze for 30 min.

rolling

roll chilled chocolate mixture into balls – return to freezer when the chocolate starts to cool and get melty until it hardens up again otherwise it will be too soft to roll into balls. i used food safe rubber gloves since this is a pretty messy step. also – i stopped using the teaspoon after the first couple because i found it easier just to pinch off a general idea of how big i wanted the chocolate balls to be. the chocolate kept getting stuck in the teaspoon so it was only useful to use once to get a general idea of the sizing.

chocolate balls

finished chilled chocolate balls

ingredients

grind up graham crackers, nuts and chocolate chips (if you haven’t yet). the hand held mixer worked, but make sure to use your hand to cover the blending container because the ingredients have a tendency to fly out and everywhere

ingredients

ground up toppings – graham crackers, almond/peanut mix, powdered sugar, chocolate chips

toppings

combine cracker crumbs, sugar, nuts, butter and rum. place ground up chocolate chips in a big enough container that you can drop the coated balls in and cover in chocolate chips. the graham/rum coating is pretty wet and sticky so make sure you have enough ground up chocolate chips. this may mean curbing snacking on chips prior to grinding process…

finished chocolate rum balls

dip (frozen-ish) ball in graham/rum mix – trying to get on as much coating as possible. immediately drop in and roll in ground chocolate chips. put in fridge until ready to eat.

noms

Lessons Learned:

  • using a hand held to grind the chocolate chips was challenging – they do not grind easily and kept flying out of the container. also it took a lot of shaking and re-grinding to get a good consistency
  • rolling the chocolate is way easier the colder the chocolate mixture is – keep it in the freezer for as long as possible before rolling and keep returning to freezer to re harden as you are rolling if it starts to get soft
  • i went heavy on the rum and lighter on the butter for the topping mixture, playing to my audience – however this did effect the coating consistency
  • the graham/rum coating was pretty wet, it is easier to coat the chocolate balls in it and then immediately drop in ground chocolate chips and roll around to make sure as much graham/rum coating sticks as possible

Review: strong rum taste which was what i was going for, i’ve been partial to rum as the weather has cooled off lately. the candy making process took a long time overall because of the re-freezing process during the initial candy rolling step, but not a hard recipe to master. the chocolate balls need to stay cool because they seem to melt and don’t hold their shape, which would make it difficult to package as a gift in any other way than an even layer – and even then the bottom part of the ball seems to level off a little bit. still pretty fancy looking though.