This week I thought I’d do something a bit different. I like cooking, and love baking, but don’t have much experience with candy-like desserts. I thought I’d try my hand at making fudge. I love classics and also making things vegan whenever possible, so I found two different recipes to try out, an Old Fashioned Chocolate Fudge and a Vegan Maple Walnut Tahini Fudge. I, unfortunately, neglected to take any pictures during the process. I hope my play-by-play is enough!

I started with the tahini fudge because it was the most simple, and seemed the easiest to tackle. The recipe pretty much consists of mixing all the ingredients and freezing. It was fully set and ready to eat in thirty minutes. I was impressed with the simplicity of this recipe, and the end product was quite tasty as well. But because most of the ingredients are liquid at room temperature, these fudge bites must be eaten right out of the freezer. They’re not something that can be served on a platter to guests, as they start melting immediately (not that people are having many guests right now, but a girl can dream right?). That being said, I would definitely make them again and would be interested to see if this recipe would work with some other nut butters.

The other recipe was a major fail for me. It had you simmer a large amount of sugar, with whole milk, and cocoa powder to a specific temperature. Then you had to add butter and vanilla and let it cool to room temperature. At that point you were supposed to beat it until it lost its shine, then pour it into a pan to set overnight. I knew my fudge was going to be no good from the beginning. Temperatures are important with candy making (something I’ve learned from countless Great British Baking Show Episodes) and my mixture was not reaching temperature whatsoever. The suggested cooking time the recipe has for reaching temperature is thirty minutes. At the thirty-minute mark, I was not even close to the goal temp. I turned the heat up a bit on the pot. This accomplished nothing in regards to the temperature, and only caused the mixture to start boiling over. I called it around an hour. I was fourteen degrees away from the target temperature and it did not look like I was going to reach it anytime soon. I knew the fudge was doomed at this point but I finished out the recipe because miracles happen sometimes right? Wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but definitely not in this scenario. My fudge was still as liquid as chocolate syrup the next day. I even tasted it thinking maybe I could use it as chocolate syrup on ice cream or something for dessert. But it was gritty with undissolved sugar and unpleasant to eat. I’d like to try making fudge again at some point. I don’t know why mine did not get to the temperature. I plan on looking into that to see if I can find a possible reason for that, otherwise, I might just try another recipe.

Friday after work was sunny and beautiful. I needed to go grocery shopping and didn’t have any food for dinner. I decided to pick up dinner and eat at a park. I went with Pita Pit, which I lowkey think is my favorite fast food place right now. I get their falafel pita and stuff it with as many veggies as possible. It’s quite tasty and feels healthier than a lot of other alternatives. The park I ate in was called High Point Bluff Park, and it has this amazing view down into a ravine. Over the weekend I visited another park where I had a quality hammock set up. I spent a lot of time there just relaxing and soaking in the sun. The warmer weather has been so amazing.

Happy Spring!