Fudged Fudge

Yes, indeed. Immediately after my predictions of occasional failure, my first one since the creation of this blog has arrived.

My father loves fudge, all kinds of it, although I think he'd be inclined to say that his favourite is maple. He also loves ginger. He also has an predilection for unusual (or at least less common) food combinations. And lo and behold, the other day, I stumbled upon a recipe for maple ginger fudge. With Father's Day on the horizon, I knew I'd found the perfect gift: a box of homemade fudge (hopefully an improvement on the aforementioned toast-applesauce-almond combination). Never having made fudge before, I had my work cut out for me. With YouTube as my trusty sidekick, I researched fudgemaking and watched a few videos (and by that, I mean I opened the pages but didn't actually read what was on them with any great degree of attention). I figured out what sorts of ingredients are always in fudge and which ones are simply about taste or preference, ventured off to the grocery store, and returned with my arms full, ready to take on this difficult (the Internet warned me) project.

How silly I was not to listen. Generally, the whole attempt was successful, except of course the part where it didn't actually turn to fudge. For those of you who don't know, there is a very thin line between glop in a pan and toffee, and that line is called fudge. I fell short of that line. Partly, I blame that result on my lack of candy thermometer, but also my complete ignorance of the soft ball test. Oh well, lesson learned.

Anyway, as a result, the fudge didn't totally set in the fridge. To cut it, I had to stick it in the freezer for about an hour, but even then, it started softening as soon as I started handling it. I think I've just resolved to present my creation to my dad in all its gloppy glory.

At any rate, here's what the fudge looked like at its least sloppy stage:

For what it's worth, the glop is absolutely delicious. :)

No Matter How You Slice It, This Bread is Pretty Darn Good

"If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens." ~Robert Browning

I have long harboured an aversion to yeast. This might stem from the psychological trauma of a high school biology experiment gone a-rye (sorry, I couldn't resist), but more likely, my baking failures in the past probably have a good deal to do with it as well. The rising/punching down thing sort of scares me. (As this recipe proved, it was a needless worry.) Unfortunately, the kinds of bread that always catch my eye and make me think, "Ooooh, wouldn't that be fun to bake?" are the ones that have yeast in them. My former roommate, Sara, is a bread baker extraordinaire - seriously, you should see what she can do with flour and eggs - and whenever I think of her, I think of bread. On Sunday, I had the delight of seeing her again for the first time in about a year, and it got me back on this bread train of thought. Fine, I thought. If I'm going to make yeast bread, I'm going to make it pretty so that at least if the yeast and rising and all that doesn't work out, it'll be nice to look at.

Ah, the Internet. Such a useful tool. I hit the usual recipe websites and finally came out with one that I thought I could manage. I got out all my ingredients and set to work, but it was only about ten seconds before I hit my first (incredibly minor) snag. "Active dry yeast? What's that?" The jar I was holding was a jar of instant yeast (my family owns a breadmaker). After consulting various search engines, I learned that you could use instant yeast in pretty much the same way as active dry yeast. Onward, then. Everything else went off without a hitch. The final product is here:

The family seemed to approve, if the speed at which the loaf was devoured is any indication.

Next on the breadmaking agenda is to use the yeast that the recipe actually calls for. I'm going to get this proofing thing down pat.

A Brief (and Self-Indulgent) Prelude

When I was about six or seven years old, my sister Olivia (a year younger than me) and I decided to surprise our parents by making them an afternoon snack. We got out some raspberry-flavoured applesauce and spread it over cinnamon raisin bread, topping it with whole almonds. In our excitement, we didn't realise that the bread was stale, and, even if it weren't, the combination was really rather revolting anyway. Our loving, supportive parents choked down the entire mess, feigning delight the whole time. Olivia and I, satisfied with our victory, retreated upstairs (undoubtedly to play Barbies, take a bath, or some other such fun pastime), not to return to the kitchen for quite some time, much to our parents' relief.

From a culinary perspective, it was a complete failure.

But that occasion marked my first real foray into combining different flavours to try to create something new and delicious. (Okay, just new.) Once I was tall and old enough to start using the stove, I learned how to make scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and soup, and in the process, found out that scrambled eggs were better if you beat them with milk and cheese before cooking them, grilled cheese was better with two different cheeses in one sandwich, and soup was really good if you threw in a few extra vegetables and some seasoning. None of these revelations was particularly groundbreaking, of course, but they were small steps on some endless road toward culinary expertise, even perfection.

Don't misunderstand my use of the word "aficionada" in the title of this blog; my surname is neither Ramsay nor Ray, I don't have a neat catchphrase, and the fourth wall of my kitchen is not raked seating for a studio audience. I don't even own a food processor, and for most of the year a working oven is nothing more than a distant memory (ah, the joys of student life). But I have twenty years' experience in eating and I like to think I know what tastes good. I have also rediscovered in recent weeks the kind of curiosity, intrigue and slight intrepidity necessary to become a good cook. And so it is my hope that with the help of a few decent recipe websites, YouTube, the handful of cookbooks in the cupboard above our microwave, my guinea pigs family and friends, and a little sticktoitiveness, my cooking and baking skills will improve to the degree where I no longer have to follow the phrase "I can cook" with a short list of recipes that I have made successfully before (pasta, the aforementioned grilled cheese sandwiches, and steamed vegetables). Rather, the phrase will stand for itself and no recipe will be too daunting or insurmountable. I will be able to say, "I can cook," with total finality, authority, and, perhaps most importantly, with total honesty. (That's the plan, anyway.) And so, in a rather Julie and Julia fashion, I am entering with abandon the arena, ready to take on difficult recipes, obscure ingredients, and bizarre techniques. Par for the course, I'm sure, will be a deflated soufflé or two, doughy bread, and at least one burnt experiment. But I am determined that there will be more successes than failures, and that I will emerge from a mountain of eggshells, carrot peelings, flour, and of course, dirty dishes clutching my creation of the day.

Let's see what happens, shall we?