All About Fudge! (And Don’t Forget Fathers Day)!

Oreos, Raisins & Fudge 🙂

With National Fudge Day just one week away, and Fathers Day even closer, things have been getting very busy, not to mention wonderfully creamy, sticky and sweet here in the Choco-Mix kitchen lately. We must have gotten through at least a tonne of fudge (well, maybe not literally a tonne, but pretty close) while we’ve been cooking up all the yummy chocolate and fudge combinations we can think of to celebrate this wonderfully tasty National Day! Fudge and pretzels; Fudge and Oreos; Fudge and popcorn; Fudge and cashews; Fudge and peanut butter – you name it, we’ve made every fudge themed medley we can think of! Why not create your own National Fudge Day combination on our website – www.chocomix..co.uk – we do have a billion different combinations to choose from after all!

Banana Chips, Peanut Butter Pieces & Fudge ❤

While fudge may seem like a fairly simple, uncomplicated, frill-free treat, getting the recipe just right is actually much trickier than you might think, and it is something that people have been trying to perfect for many, many decades. Fudge was actually invented by the Americans in 1886, and was apparently the product of an unsuccessful (of ‘fudged up’, as the term comes from) batch of caramels that had re-crystallized. And what a fortunate mistake that turned out to be indeed! One of the first written mentions of fudge is in a letter written by a girl named Emelyn Hartridge, who at the time was studying in the Vassar College in New York. According to her letter, Emelyn had discovered that one of her classmates cousins had been making and selling fudge or 40 cents per pound, and so Emelyn got her hands on the delicious recipe and made 30 pounds (that’s 13,608 grams!) of her own fudge for her College’s Senior Auction. Word of this creamy, satisfying new confection quickly spread, and soon both the Wellesley and Smith Ladies Colleges were making their own batches of fudge. However, the original fudge recipe was extremely difficult to get just right, as it required precise measurements and specific cooking times and temperatures, and so several ‘foolproof’ recipes were created in order to make the process a little easier. However, these new recipes always lacked a certain something, and so the original recipe, while being the most difficult, is certainly the best – The Original Fudge Recipe (The trickiest one) INGREDIENTS –

• 2 cups of granulated white sugar
• 1 cup of cream
• 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate (chopped)
• 1 tablespoon of butter

Pecans, Nutmeg & Fudge – Irresistable!

METHOD – Combine the sugar and cream and cook over a medium heat. When very hot, add the chocolate and stir constantly. Cook until the mixture reaches the ‘soft-ball’ stage (around 113˚c), and then remove from heat and add the butter. Allow to cool slightly and then begin mixing again until the fudge starts to thicken . Then transfer into a buttered tin and cut the fudge into pieces before it hardens completely. The Wellesley College Recipe (A ‘foolproof’ version). INGREDIENTS –

• 2 cups of granulated white sugar
• 1 cup of heavy cream
• 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate (chopped)
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• ½ pound of marshmallows.

METHOD – Same as above – add the marshmallows at the same time as the butter.

Hula Hoops, Chilli & Fudge – Unique & Delicious! 🙂

The Smith College Recipe (This one’s a little different)

INGREDIENTS –

• 4 tablespoons of butter
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• ¼ cup of molasses
• ½ cup of heavy cream
• 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
• 1 ½ teaspoons of vanilla

Digestive Biscuit & Fudge 🙂

METHOD – Combine the butter, sugar, brown sugar, molasses and heavy cream and cook all over a medium heat. When this mixture starts to boil, add the chocolate and stir constantly until the mixture reaches the ‘soft-ball’ stage. Then remove from the heat, add the vanilla and allow to cool slightly. Once the mixture has cooled a little, mix it up again until it starts to thicken, and then transfer to a buttered pan. Cut up the fudge before it hardens completely. (Recipes courtesy of thenibble.com)   But, as we mentioned earlier, fudge is a deceptively difficult recipe to get right. So if you’re not 100% confident on your skills in the kitchen, why not leave it to the professionals, and entrust your National Fudge Day delights to the Choco-Mix team? Just check out our website – www.chocomix.co.uk – for our full range of customizable fudge and chocolate mixtures! We’re predicting a busy week of orders in the build up to this years National Fudge Day & Fathers Day, so get your chocolate orders in well in advance, to ensure they are made and posted to you in time for the weekends post! Happy Eating!

National Pretzel Day – April 26th

We know we’re a little premature in saying this, but Happy National Pretzel Day everybody! National Pretzel Day is actually 3 days from now – on April 26th – but we were too excited to wait!

New Chocs On The Block

Being right in the middle of the Easter rush, we’ve been kicking things up a notch here at Choco-Mix. After a long winters hibernation the sun is finally starting to shine on 2014, and a new year can only mean one thing – New chocolates!
We’ve still kept all of your old favourite bars – like Eton Mess, Pom Bear Party, Monkey Munch and more – but we also now have 15 new chocolate creations to tantalize and tease your taste buds! And that’s on top of our special Easter bars!
We’ve been hard at work cooking up these brand new recipes, just for you, so come and take a look at what we’ve made. It’s finally time to start your summer fling and discover the chocolate that will steal your heart!

The Many Joys of April

You’ve probably heard the saying ‘Time flies when you’re having fun.” Well, the team here at Choco-Mix have our own version – we like to say ‘Time flies when you’re making Chocolate’ (because after all, there’s nothing more fun than Chocolate) – and that’s certainly been true this year!

Without even realising it we’ve arrived in April already, and Easter has snuck up on us once again. Which means, of course, that things have been very busy in the Choco-Mix kitchen, getting ready for one of our biggest days of the year.
But April isn’t just for Easter Sunday, and there are plenty of other chocolate and sweetie related days to celebrate this month that often go unnoticed. So we’ve decided to take it upon ourselves to make sure that these celebrations get their fair share of attention – Let’s make every day a Choco-Mix day!