Eggnog? What the fudge?

Sure, fudge can be for any time of year, but eggnog fudge is seasonal... and 'tis the season.

Eggnog fudge is a versatile treat: stocking stuffer, thoughtful hand-crafted gift, perfect snack for outdoor winter activity.  Go ahead and suggest a potluck hiking or snowshoeing snack with your friends or family over the holidays, just so you can win with this fudge.  Potluck is a competitive sport, right?

Eggnog Fudge

500 ml eggnog
100 ml whipping cream
200 g butter
700 g granulated sugar
2 tbsp rum
freshly grated nutmeg to garnish


Line a square baking pan with parchment paper.

Combine eggnog, cream, butter and sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Heat slowly, stirring frequently until all the sugar is dissolved and the butter is melted.  Raise heat to med-high and bring to a boil.

Boil, stirring constantly, until it reaches the soft ball stage.  We stick to the cold water method (syrup dropped into cold water forms a ball that flattens out, but does not run, when you remove it from the water).  If you have a candy thermometer and you're confident in both the thermometer and your ability to use it, feel free to rely on it.  Either way, the boiling will take 15-25 minutes at sea-level depending on the size saucepan you are using (longer for smaller surface area).  

Remove from heat, quickly stir in the rum, then let cool for 5 minutes.  Stir until no longer glossy, pour into prepared pan.  Sprinkle nutmeg over the surface as a garnish and let cool completely before cutting.

~~~

This is an old-fashioned fudge recipe: no corn syrup; no marshmallow fluff; no condensed milk.  Is it absolutely fail proof?  No.  But it's the best fudge you'll every eat (in my biased opinion, anyway).  If you read "fail-proof" or "no fail" in the title of a fudge recipe, it's a lie, my friends.  Things can go wrong.

You use the wrong sized pot or a pot with too thin a base.  Your glass candy thermometer breaks and you can't find the missing glass.  Your metal candy thermometer isn't reliable.  Your fully-reliable probe thermometer is set in the froth rather than the liquid and accurately reads the wrong temperature.  Your cold water isn't cold enough.  Your cold water is too cold.  It's too humid. It's too dry.  You are distracted and miss the soft ball stage.  You are impatient and take it off the heat too early.  A cat gets into trouble exiting a reusable-shopping-bag-play-house and needs rescuing from the noisy laminated fabric chasing it around so you stop stirring just long enough for it to burn.  You're dehydrated from the heat in your kitchen while you try to cook eight million treats for the holidays and your judgement is compromised.

First, don't panic.  We all have to throw a batch of candy out at one point or another.

Second, don't panic.  I have made this fudge a LOT.   It only failed very rarely and always due to, uh, well, user error (that is, when I think I know better than my own recipe).  Follow the recipe, and it will work. 

Third, don't panic.  Perfect fudge is excellent for stuffing in stockings and gifting to neighbours (or teachers or colleagues).  The slightly imperfect fudge, in the rare event it happens, is something you get to keep for yourself.

Dance of the Sugar Plums

di-di dee dee di-di dee dee di-di dee dee   doo   doo   doodloodlee  di-di dee dee di-di dee dee di-di dee dee doo doo doodloodlee... deedee dee deedee dee deedee dee didi didi dee...

Sugar plums are like fruit and nut truffles; nature's candy in a candy-like format.  Know a ballet-nutty child or a middle-aged recreational jogger?  Gift problem solved.  Read on.

Sugar Plums

I find it extraordinarily satisfying to lay out all the ingredients
together.  It feels so gluttonous and yet so wholesome.

1-1/3 c. walnuts
1 c. pecans
2/3 c. almonds
zest of two clementine oranges
1 tsp. (heaping) ground cinnamon
1 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
1-1/4 c. dried prunes
1-1/4 c. dried apricots
1 c. dried dates
1 c. dried cranberries
1 c. dried figs
1/2 c. dried apples
8 slices candied ginger
6 tbsp orange liqueur
turbinado sugar (fine grain, but not powdered), for dusting

Grind walnuts, pecans and almonds in a blender or spice grinder.  Have a food processor?  You lucky son of nutcracker, use it.  Do not over grind, you want nut meal, not nut butter.

In a LARGE mixing bowl, combine nuts, zest and ground spices together.  Use your clean dry fingers, there's no point in getting a mixing spoon out for any part of this recipe.

Using a sharp knife, finely chop all dried fruits and the candied ginger.  (Yes, okay, or use your food processor, but aim for a crumbly texture, not a paste.)  Since the fruits are moist and sticky, you may need to rinse your knife and your hands under hot water occasionally.  Unless you enlist a lot of help or some appropriate technology, this is going to take a long time.  That's okay, put Hawksley Workman's Almost a Full Moon on, keep your shoulders back and relaxed, and get into a fruit-mincing groove.  Add chopped fruit to mixing bowl whenever your cutting board gets crowded.

Using your hands, thoroughly mix dried fruit and nut meal together.  The dried apples will stand out in the mix because they're such a light colour... so use the distribution of dried apple bits to gauge how well blended everything is.  Also feel around for clumps of fruit that didn't separate and be sure to work them into the mixture well.

Sprinkle orange liqueur over the mixture.  If you didn't pre-measure this, you might need someone else to help you get the lid off and pour out what you need.  Work the liqueur throughout the mixture which should now pull itself together like a dough; if you squeeze a bit of it, it will stick together in the shape you squeezed it into. (If it's not sticky enough, add a bit more liqueur.)

Shape into balls that are slightly bigger than your average truffle.  Roll them in the sugar and lay them on waxed or parchment paper in a single layer on baking trays.  Let air-dry for 1-2 hours, roll in sugar again to cover any remaining moist spots and pack layered with wax paper into a tin.

Leave the sugar plums out at room temperature for a week to mature.  After that, store them in the fridge for a few weeks or in the freezer for longer.   If they've been frozen, you may want to roll in sugar again before serving.



This recipe makes six or seven dozen sugar plums.  Enough for gifting and for keeping for yourself.

~~~

My older sister was obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder when we were kids.  Consequently, I have happy Christmas memories of us making pulled taffy using a recipe from the Little House Cookbook...  even though it's something which is supposed to be cooled before you pull it by pouring over snow.  Which we really didn't have much of (if any) as early as December in the deep south of Canada.  We might have only done it once, but I will never forget the little hard bits of taffy twisted into the shape of candy canes.  Er, a few of them, anyway.  I also have vague peanut brittle memories which are less exactly happy (the wrong sugar used, the right sugar burnt).  Peanut brittle was probably made more frequently but I don't actually like it so it's not sticking well in my mind.  Candy making was probably inconsistent year to year.  Nevermind though, because Grandma always (or nearly always, or maybe only sometimes) made marshmallows and dipped apricots in something like chocolate.  Or is it possible these were an actual chocolate exception to the no-chocolate-because-your-brother-is-allergic household rule?

A few years ago, it occurred to me that despite living thousands of kilometers away from home, there was no reason I couldn't take over the job of providing chocolate-covered apricots for Christmas.  So Fefe Noir and I started a tradition of making Christmas candy to mail home (and despite a complete disaster with turkish delight, we've been pretty good at soldiering on).  Thus began my love affair with sugar plums.  Dried fruit, nuts, orange and spices: they are the epitome of winter flavours.

Even though Fefe does not believe in nature's candy unless it includes chocolate, she makes an enthusiastic exception for sugar plums (huh, wait, I wonder if it's because of the booze?). 

Make these for the holidays.  You'll be so proud of them, you'll want to share... but if you don't make enough you will regret giving any away.  But don't worry, the problem is solved for you because my recipe makes about 80, which is plenty for both gifting and hoarding. 

These are time-consuming, but very simple.  No cooking means no chance of accidentally burning them, no struggling to determine if your candy thermometer is working (for that matter, no tearing the kitchen apart looking for your candy thermometer), and, if you have any of those miniature humans in your house, you can conscript them to help with ball forming and sugar coating duties.  If they are the nearly-fledged variety, you might even be able to hand out the tedious job of chopping the fruit into teensy pieces... while you supervise the liqueur, of course. 

~~~

Yeah, uh, there were absolutely, definitely no cats on the counter when I prepared the batch of sugar plums scheduled for postal delivery to friends and family.  Honest...