My Mom's Fudge

Growing up this fudge was a holiday tradition in my house.  There were a few years where my mother made butter cookies around the holidays, but she made this fudge each and every single year.  I remember helping Mom wrap each individual piece of fudge in tiny little wrappers she bought specifically for that purpose - sometimes they were holiday themed, sometimes they weren't.  I don't think it needs to be said that I probably ate just as many pieces as I successfully wrapped along the way.  What I love about this fudge is that it is really easy to make and it isn't too sweet.  So many fudge recipes are so sweet that they make my teeth hurt - this one is nowhere near that sweet.  It also doesn't do the instant crazy melty thing that a lot of store-bought or homemade fudge does once you put it in your mouth.  I guess I like my fudge to be a little sweeter and a little less traditionally fudgy?  I don't know.  What I do know is that Christmas doesn't quite feel like Christmas without some of this homemade fudge in the kitchen.

Recipe after the jump!

Chocolate Almond Bark with Sea Salt

I'm not sure if people outside of NYC are familiar with Jacques Torres, but they have this amanzing hot chocolate there that they call Wicked Hot Chocolate.  It is very rich and deeply chocolately, but it has this really nice spice to it.  I personally happen to think that dark chocolate works wonderfully with spice (and salt, but that's another story altogether).  A few months ago I stopped at Jacques Torres with a friend to grab some hot chocolate and my friend told me I had to try this pumpkin seed bark/brittle that they only make around the holidays.  It was amazing - just as good as the hot chocolate!  They paired pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds), with some dried cranberries, chocolate, caramel...  It was so good.  And I wanted to make it at home.  But when it came down to it, Alex wasn't a huge fan of the idea of dried cranberries and I was too lazy to try to recreate the recipe from a memory that was several months old.  So I decided to make this Chocolate Almond Bark with Sea Salt instead.  Things in the Boyne appartment often end up a little loosey-goosey like that.  I had this really nice brick (it literally looked like a gold brick) of dark chocolate from L.A. Burdick that I had been saving for future baking experiments and we always have sea salt in the apartment.  The only thing we needed was Marcona almonds (although I'm sure you could substitute hazelnuts and this recipe would still be delicious).  So I swung by Zabars on my way home and we were in business.

Although there were several steps involved, this bark was really easy to make.  You have to really enjoy the combination of dark chocolate and sea salt to like this bark (which I do so I really enjoyed it).  There isn't a lot of sweetness to the chocolate itself and the caramel only provides so much sweetness, so if you are into sweet chocolate barks you will need to combine semisweet and dark chocolate.  I really like the bittersweet taste of dark chocolate so I wouldn't use semisweet, but that's just me.  Make sure to use good-quality dark chocolate.  The recipe calls for it but there are plenty of times when I'm not sure that you could taste the difference.  Since this recipe is so simple and relies so heavily on the flavor of the chocolate itself, you really need to make the effort to track down some high-quality chocolate.  Trust me when I say that it will make all the difference in the world if you do.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Coconut Cashew Nuts

Cashews are my favorite nut.  And once upon a time we had some amazing cashews at an Indian restaurant named Dhaba in NYC.  The cashews were flash-cooked with chilis and spices and called tale huay kaju.  They were amazing - slightly charred, spicy, and totally delicious.  They were the perfect snack.  After eating the cashews at Dhaba I stumbled across a recipe for Roasted Coconut Cashew Nuts in one of our Thai cookbooks.  I knew right then we had to make them.  And it took us a little while, but we finally got around to it this weekend.  The cashews were yummy.  They weren't as good as the version we had at Dhaba, but they were a fun snack.  Alex said that they weren't amazing, but then again, we couldn't stop eating them.  They had some spice, some richness from the coconut and the cashews themselves, and a little sweetness from the honey.

Recipe after the jump!