Dreamy Fudge

Yay! I'm so excited to share this first recipe post! It's called Dreamy Fudge, which my sister found in her Food Technology textbook from school. So yesterday, we decided to give it a whack with our own alterations (we just doubled the ingredients to make more and didn't add the coffee flavour), especially since you don't even need an oven to make these sweet lollies. Below, I'll also be sharing the recipe, step-by-step.

Ingredients:

• 2 standard cans of condensed milk.
• 2 cups of firmly packed brown sugar (tip: put brown sugar in a cup and squish it to the cup with a spoon to pack it).
• 250g butter, chopped.
• 400g dark cooking chocolate, finely chopped.
• 4 tablespoons liquid glucose.

Steps:

1. Line a large rectangular tin with baking paper, letting enough extra paper hang off the sides like above.

2. Stir together condensed milk, brown sugar, chopped butter and liquid glucose in a microwave-safe glass bowl. After that, microwave the bowl on 75% power (medium-high)  for 6-8 minutes, whisking every two minutes. What me and my sister did was microwave it for four 2-minute sessions to make up 8 minutes in total, stirring every two minutes, as shown below.

Oh gosh, I didn't read the part of using a whisk until it was just a little too late, but we got there... in the end, the mixture didn't end up as smooth as we wanted because we didn't use the whisk. So tip, guys. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS VERY CAREFULLY, haha.

3. Microwave the mixture again for 3-4 minutes on 75% power (medium-high), stirring every minute with a wooden spoon. Again, like what we did before, we microwaved the mixture in four 1-minute intervals, mixing in between time. After that, place the mixture someplace and leave it for a minute to cool down a bit.

4. While you're waiting for the fudge mixture to cool, finely chop the dark chocolate. Way to wisely use time; instead of just sitting around for a minute, waiting for the mixture to cool, use time wisely! (Something I've learnt over the HSC year, haha).

 5. Add the dark chocolate in the fudge mixture and stir the chocolate around the bowl until it melts (the fudge mixture is still very hot, so the chocolate will melt, don't worry!) .April and I didn't add the extra ingredients in there, but you can also add nuts, raisins or the coffee mixture in there too.

When you're done mixing everything in, it should finally look somewhat like the photo above. April reckons it looks like brownie mix, just that it doesn't taste like it!

6. Carefully (can't emphasise that word enough apart from using italics) pour the mixture in the lined pan. It's gonna be very helpful if you get another person to pour in the mixture while you scrape everything off to the pan and make sure the mixture is poured evenly in the pan. After that, neatly and evenly spread out the mixture to the pan.

7. After that, put the pan in the fridge and leave it there for 3-4 hours or overnight. Use a skewer and poke a hole somewhere in the fudge mix to see if it's firm enough to slice.

8. When the Dreamy Fudge is finally firm, slice it into tiny squares, as shown in the first photograph from the textbook! (Sorry guys, I haven't been able to take a photo of it yet. We kept it in the fridge overnight and because April's been sick and I've been out jobhunting today, we haven't been able to slice the Dreamy Fudge into squares! But I will update yous with the photos ASAP!)

Overall, hopefully this recipe has motivated you a little bit into making your own sweets whenever you're bored. In all honestly, this recipe wasn't that hard. The hardest thing is probably just being careful with the temperature because things will get pretty hot along the way. Plus, the only thing you really need are the ingredients, a bowl, spoons and a microwave. No oven required, and everyone knows how to use a microwave anyway (except for my grandmother) so the recipe overall is really, really easy! Trust me.

P.S. I get the feeling that when my sister brings these over to her boyfriend's house, she's gonna take all the credit for it. Tsk tsk tsk. This recipe has actually always been an inside joke to them because he has the same initials as the recipe "Dreamy Fudge" tsk tsk tsk. I think that's even his Bluetooth name. Tsk tsk tsk.