Recipe: Christmas soft chocolate fudge

And why is it Christmas fudge? Well, because it's only ever made at Christmas. (By law.)

Makes

64 pieces, if you cut it up exactly like I did

Ingredients

• 8oz (225g) dark chocolate
• 8oz (225g) plain chocolate-flavoured cake covering
• 15oz (405g) can of sweetened condensed milk
• ½ tsp vanilla essence

Preparation

1. Brush a 7" square cake tin lightly with oil.

2. Melt the chocolate and the cake covering and stir until no lumps remain.

   (The presence of the cake covering – which, by the way, although it sounds bizarre and unnecessary, is apparently what makes the fudge soft and delicious instead of hard and more traditionally fudge-like – meant that I could melt the two together in the microwave rather than over a bowl of hot water. I can never get chocolate on its own to melt in the microwave.)

3. Add the vanilla essence and the condensed milk, and mix with a spoon.

   (This is where the fudge mixture will really thicken up and start setting, so get ready to pour into the tin.)

4. Pour into the cake tin and smooth the top.

   (You may or may not have time to smooth over before it sets. Still, this makes for nice swirly patterns on the top.)

5. Cut into squares, see if you can lever them out of the tin, and place them into sweet papers.

Recipe: Christmas almond rum truffles

Makes

50-60 truffles

Ingredients

• 4oz (115g) butter
• 4oz (115g) caster sugar
• 4oz (115g) plain chocolate
• 6oz (170g) ground almonds
• 4oz (115g) cake crumbs
• chocolate sprinkles or cocoa powder
• rum or rum flavouring

Preparation

1. Cream the butter and sugar.

   (The original recipe tells you to add some almond essence at this stage, but I couldn't be bothered to buy any and so left it out.)

2. Melt the chocolate.

   (As discussed in the previous post, nothing ever happens when I try to melt chocolate by microwave, so I recommend the melting-over-a-saucepan-of-water method. But not having the water so hot that it steams and scalds your knuckle. *cough*)

3. Add the ground almonds and the melted chocolate, and beat the mixture thoroughly.

   (If you don't like the taste of almonds, you can swap them out for biscuit crumbs or more cake crumbs.)

4. Add a few teaspoons of rum or a few drops of rum flavouring, and beat in the cake crumbs until a thick paste is formed. Knead it well.

5. Get ready a bowl of chocolate sprinkles or cocoa powder. Take small amounts of the mixture, form them into balls and roll in the sprinkles/cocoa.

6. Place into sweet papers.

   And clean up the million chocolate sprinkles (or the dusting of cocoa powder) that went everywhere in the previous step.