Mini Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins to the Rescue

So it's 6 a.m. and you realize that you're out of the only thing your kids will willingly eat for breakfast, even if it is craptastic frozen waffles don't judge me. A quick, fuzzy-brained perusal of the fridge and pantry also reveals you're out of just about everything else, too. Your first kid will be up and HUNGRY in 30 minutes. Quick - whattaya do?

I turned to these pumpkiny little beauties. The recipe comes from Pam Anderson's cookbook "The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great." Love it. (And right now you can get it cheap on Amazon.)

These bad boys were mixed, plopped, baked and out of the oven in about 20 minutes. And while the girls probably wouldn't beg for them every day, the muffins were a success - and a heckofa lot better for them than craptastic frozen waffles.

Notes:

• Don't skip the cooking of the pumpkin. It doesn't take long, and it gets rid of any tinny taste the can might leave behind.
• The recipe calls for whole wheat flour - I used white whole wheat. 
• I didn't use the orange glaze due to time restrictions, but I've used it before and it's tasty. I used some leftover cinnamon confectioner's sugar - just dusted a little on top - very yum and not as sticky as the orange glaze.
• Each unglazed muffin has 99 calories, if you're counting those pesky little things. No idea how many thousands of calories cinnamon confectioner's sugar adds...

The cinnamon powdered sugar melts into the muffins after a while,
but you can still taste it....

Mini Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins

(Adapted from "The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great")

1 can (15 ounces) 100% pure pumpkin (pumpkin only - no pie mix)

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup flavorless oil, such as vegetable or canola

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup white whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray 24 mini muffin cups with cooking spray, or line with paper liners.

Place pumpkin and spices in a small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Stir it together and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally for 3 minutes. Pour hot mixture into a medium sized bowl.  Whisk in brown sugar and oil. Slowly beat in eggs.

In another bowl, whisk remaining dry ingredients together. Whisk the pumpkin mixture into the dry mixture - just until combined. Over-mixing kills muffins dead.

Put about 2 tablespoons batter into each muffin cup. Bake until golden and cooked through, 10 - 12 minutes.

Let muffins stand for a few minutes, then take them out and put them on a wire rack to cool a bit.

Sift a little confectioner's sugar over the top (either plain or with cinnamon). Or drizzle an orange glaze made by whisking together 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar, 1/4 teaspoon orange zest, and 2 teaspoons orange juice.

That's it - you're done! 

Chocolate Sorbet for Everyone!

You know how you make all these wonderful plans for summer - to get stuff done (like, say, blogging), now that you have some extra time? And you know how you wake up in mid-August and realize school's starting again, summer's pretty much done and you only managed to do a teeny portion of the things on your great summer to-do list? Yep. That happened. Sigh.

Movin' on.


My sister and her kids made the drive up from Texas to see kinfolk like us. Yay!

Sister

Cousins @ the pool. From left to right - hers, mine, hers, mine.

My sister has done a great job identifying and tackling a bunch of food allergies and issues in her little fam. When everybody has a different food problem, how do you make sure everybody can eat? She has to find foods with: no soy, no dairy, no eggs and no grain (including grain-based stuff like corn syrup, which is in everything). Not an easy thing to manage, but she's doing it.

I didn't want them to worry about eating at my house, so I did some poking around. I wanted to grill some chicken using our favorite, easy marinade. But it calls for soy sauce. Hmmm, is there such a thing as soy-free soy sauce? Yep! You can buy some, but you can also make it yourself. So, grilled chicken - easy peasy.

Sides were no problem (roasted white and sweet potatoes, and a big fruit salad). Then came dessert. Because you have to have dessert.

Their visit was during the never-ending heat wave we had. Temps over 100 every day. So ice cream would have been perfect. But - no dairy and no eggs, remember? Hmmm...

Then I remembered a little recipe I'd seen on Smitten Kitchen. Chocolate Sorbet. No eggs. No dairy. Lotsa yum.

So, that's what we did. It's easy and really, really good. I asked the kids if they liked it - and in between big, messy bites, they grinned and said, "It's great! That's why we're eating it!"

Even if you don't have egg or dairy issues, this is a scrumptious ice cream alternative. It's not low calorie because it has sugar, but it is low fat, so you can chow down with very little guilt.

Chocolate Sorbet
(recipe from Smitten Kitchen)

Makes 1 quart

2 1/4 cups water
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark)
Pinch of salt
6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used Bakers Unsweetened Chocolate because it does not have soy in it - some chocolates do)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large saucepan, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of the water, sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Bring to a boil, whisking frequently. Boil, whisking continuously for 45 seconds.

Note to self: photographing chocolate in a black pot is not a good idea.

Remove chocolate mixture from heat and stir in your finely chopped chocolate pieces:

Finely chopped chocolate

Finely chopped chocolate added to chocolate mix in a black pot.

Stir until chocolate is melted. Then add vanilla extract and the rest of the water (3/4 cup).

First it looks like this... (that's steamy, not blurry)

...then it looks like this.

Transfer this silky mixture to a blender and swirl it around for 15 seconds or so.

1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi...

Now, the instructions say to chill the mixture thoroughly. You could stick the blender in the refrigerator, I suppose. I wasn't sure how thick the mixture would get, and I didn't want to lose any chocolatey goodness by it sticking to the blender blades. So I used a trick I learned from an awesome ice cream recipe book, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

First, set up a gallon sized zip-top bag inside a large measuring cup:

This is a 4-cup dealie.

Next, pour your chocolate mixture into the bag.

Like so.

Then, take the bag out of the cup, zip it up, and you're ready to go.

Ta-da!

Put your choco-baggie in the refrigerator (flat, if you can) for at least 4 hours. AT LEAST. Overnight is better. I can tell you that this chilling process is crucial to making ice cream or sorbet. I have several shameful ice cream failures under my belt, and they were all due to the fact that I did not chill the base long enough. Your little ice cream maker needs all the help it can get to keep the mixture cold. If you don't, the ice cream maker will spin and spin and spin and all you'll ever get is great looking soup that will crush your soul because it was going to be such AWESOME ice cream but it's not.

So, chill, baby, chill.

When you're ready to churn, snip one corner off the bottom of your choco-baggie and pour the base into your ice cream maker.

Make sure you snip the corner while holding the bag right over the opening in the top of the ice cream maker. Because if you don't - and this is just a rumor, mind you - it is possible to lose some of that chocolate goodness when it spurts out onto the floor. And the taste of tears mixed in with chocolate is not good. Or so I've heard...

Let your ice cream maker do it's magic and in no time, you have awesome, allergen-free chocolate sorbet.

I was going to the a picture of the kids eating it, but they ate it too fast!

Chocolate sorbet for everyone - happy churning!

Strawberry-Vanilla Jam

Say you found a big container of strawberries on sale for a really good price. You'd snatch it up, wouldn't you? I did - and quickly realized that it would not be possible to snarf them all down one by one before they all turned to mush. What to do, what to do?

Fortunately, I'd been snatching up strawberry recipes, too - I wrote about some here, and dog-eared the latest Southern Living magazine:

I did make some Strawberry Lemonade Muffins from that issue, but right now I wanna talk about jam. Jam jam mamma-jamma jam.

There are all kinds of recipes for the kind of jam that you preserve and can stay on your shelf for a long time. I have yet to brave the whole canning thing and didn't want to risk wasting my lovely berries on an experiment.

So I went to a recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. That thing is so well-used and well-loved that it would make the Velveteen Rabbit jealous.

Near the back of the book, on a smudged page 780, is the recipe for Strawberry Refrigerator Jam. The kind you cook up in a skillet in less than 30 minutes. It won't be shelf-stable for 6 months, but that's ok - it's so good you'll have trouble not scarfing it down in 6 minutes.

I put a little twist on the recipe by tossing in a whole vanilla bean during the simmer process. And Oh My, am I glad I did.

A note from the Test Kitchen folks: "After making batch after batch of this jam, we learned that the one thing you must do is to err on the side of undercooking, as the jam will thicken as it cools." Now you know.

They also say that if you like your jam on the sweeter side, or if the strawberries seem too tart, you can add more sugar. I'm guessing you could make this with artificial sweeteners, if you like, but I can't attest to how it would taste.

And now you can make:

Strawberry-Vanilla Refrigerator Jam
(slightly adapted from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
Makes about 2 cups
Will keep in the refrigerator about 2 weeks

1 quart strawberries, hulled and sliced thin (that's 4 cups)
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 vanilla bean, halved and scraped

Put ice water in a large bowl, then set a smaller bowl inside it (don't let the water get into the small bowl). Set aside.

In a 12-inch nonstick skillet, simmer the sliced strawberries, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla bean seeds and pods over medium heat until the mixture begins to look syrupy, about 10 minutes. It will start out like this:

And end up like this:

Remove the skillet from heat and spoon about 1/2 teaspoon of the fruit mixture into the bowl set into the ice water. Wait 30 seconds. Tip the bowl to one side. The jam should only move a little bit. If it's too runny and moves to the side of the bowl, like this:

then put the skillet back on the heat until it looks thicker, 2 - 4 minutes more. Do the test again. It should look like this:

And...you're done.

Take out the vanilla bean pods. Let your jam cool to room temperature for about an hour. Then you can serve it up, or put it into a pretty jar and feel all Little House on the Prairie with your jam making skills.

Enjoy!

Honey Lime Chicken & Coconut Rice

Honey Lime Chicken & Coconut Rice

Just to prove that I'm not all about the baking and the sweets, I thought I'd dish on a little main dish. (Have no fear, fellow dessert-bread-sweets-addicts, I have plenty of sweet & carby stuff up my sleeve.)

I spotted this recipe in the February issue of Southern Living Magazine. The actual recipe is Honey-Lime Chicken with Coconut-Black Bean Rice. I knew there was no way my fam would eat black bean anything, so I dumbed it down and just made coconut rice. But if you have a house full of black bean eaters, check out the original recipe online.

NOTES:

• I had a mostly-done bag of Hint of Lime tortilla chips laying around the pantry, so I crushed those along with the regular tortilla chips for a bit of extra limey-ness. Yum.
• I also upped the amount of lime zest and juice. I zested 2 limes and juiced 2 limes (they were small). 3 out of 4 Mundys approved. One could have done with less limeyness. One had to get over it. Lime it up as much as you like. I thought the extra tartness balanced the sweet coconut rice quite nicely.
• You might want to pound the chicken breasts a bit to make them a little thinner, and of even thickness (so they cook at the same time).
• I decided not to fry mine, like the recipe called for. I baked them in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or so. Just make sure they're cooked to 170 degrees. 

Honey Lime Chicken with Coconut Rice
Makes 4 servings

1 (13.5 oz) can coconut milk
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, divided
1 cup uncooked long grain rice
4 chicken breasts (or 6 cutlets)
3/4 - 1 cup finely crushed tortilla chips
1/4 cup honey
1 - 2 teaspoons lime zest
1/3 cup fresh lime juice (2 - 3 limes)

Bring coconut milk and 1 teaspoon salt to a boil over medium-high heat; stir in rice. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 20 minutes, or until rice is tender. (Stir it a few times - the sugars in the coconut milk will make it stick and burn if you're not careful.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place a wire rack over a baking sheet or roasting pan. Spray with nonstick spray.

Place crushed tortilla chips in a pie plate or shallow bowl.

Those little green bits - Hint o'Lime bits. Yum.

Whisk honey,

If you don't have one of these Measure-All Cups, get one. It makes it so much easier to measure & transfer sticky ingredients like honey & peanut butter, & jiggly ingredients like mayo & yogurt.

lime zest,

Microplane zester - another kitchen must have.

and lime juice

I also highly recommend a reamer, too.

together in a shallow bowl or pie plate. Reserve 2 or 3 tablespoons of this golden goodness for later.

Sprinkle chicken with pepper and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Dip chicken in the honey mixture, then dredge in crushed chips. You'll probably need to press some of the chips into the chicken to make sure it's evenly coated.

Place chicken on wire rack:

Baking the chicken on a rack like this lets the heat circulate evenly around the chicken and lets the juices drip down. This way you get a crispy coating on all sides, not just the top.

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 170 degrees.

Remove from oven and spoon reserved honey mixture over the chicken.

Nice and golden brown, with a touch of fresh honey-lime sauce on top. Oh yeah...

Plate it up with your coconut rice and veggies of your choice:

Sweet, tangy, crunchy, juicy - it's just about got it all. Enjoy!

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

So my kids have been bagel fiends since they first got teeth. We probably could have bought a new car with all the money we've poured into buying bagels over the years. 

I'd made them from scratch once, many moons ago, and I didn't do very well. I don't remember much about the experience but the word 'rocks' comes to mind. I haven't tried them since.

Until.

Not sure what spurred the thought, but a couple of weeks ago I decided to make some bagels. I poked around for recipes and found some good ones. But when I said, "Today is the day I make bagels!" it turned out I didn't have all the ingredients I needed. So I cast about my cookbook collection for a recipe that didn't call for whatever I was out of. And I found one.

Yay.

Only not.

I tried the recipe from my wonderful "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" book. I've loved everything I made from it. Until the bagels. Um...

I followed all the instructions and they came out, well...here, look:

See how fancy I got? Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, even cinnamon sugar. But. They were skinny and chewy, but not in the good way that bagels are supposed to be. My girls said they were "rustic" and politely ate one, but then these little suckers languished in the pantry until they had to be thrown out.

I did not want to be defeated by mere bagels, so the next grocery trip, I made sure I got everything I needed to do these bad boys right.

Except I didn't. Get all the right stuff, I mean. Bagels need to be made with a  high protein flour, like bread flour. No prob! I have tons of flours in the pantry, right? Right! But lookie here:

Do you see bread flour? Neither did I. Ack!

But, I did a little ingredient substitution sleuthing, and found that you can add vital wheat gluten to regular flour to boost the protein levels. Aha! I had vital wheat gluten! So, I did as instructed and added 1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten per cup of all-purpose flour. And away we went...

I found this recipe at Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. (I may need to add that tome to my wish list...)

My Notes:

• This is a bit time and process intensive. There are several stages - the sponge making and dough making stages, the retarding stage, and the cooking stage. But totally worth it! The girls loved these babies, said they were at least as good as what we've gotten at certain places that rhyme with Ranera. (Maybe better.)
• Do not attempt these unless you have at least 3 free hours on one day, room in the fridge to hold two trays of resting bagels overnight, overnight time, and about a half hour the morning you want to bake and enjoy them. (Please don't fling your hands up and pffft! me at this point - it really is worth it.) I'm hoping to get a little faster the more I make these.
• Yes, bagels need to be given a quick skinny dip in boiling water before you bake them. I, too, wondered why. It helps set the crust and gives you that perfect, bagely texture you love. Adding baking soda to the water helps them brown in the oven. Here's more about it, if you're curious.

Ok, kids, let's make some bagels!

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
Yield: 12(ish) large or 24 mini bagels

For the Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
4 cups unbleached, high-gluten or bread flour OR 4 cups all-purpose flour + 4 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
2 1/2 cups water, at room temperature

For the Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
3 3/4 cups unbleached high-gluten or bread flour OR 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour + 3 3/4 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
5 tablespoons sugar
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons honey or brown sugar
2 cups loosely packed raisins, rinsed

To Finish:
1 tablespoon baking soda
Cornmeal for dusting

To make the sponge: Stir yeast (and vital wheat gluten if using) into flour in a large mixing bowl. Add water, whisking or stirring until it forms a smooth, sticky batter. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Leave for 2 hours at room temperature; the mixture should become foamy and bubbly, swelling to nearly double in size. When the bowl is tapped on the countertop, mixture should collapse.

To make the dough: Add the additional yeast to the sponge mixture. Stir. Add 3 cups flour (and vital wheat gluten, if using), cinnamon, sugar, salt and honey/brown sugar. Stir, or mix on low speed with dough hook. (This dough gets really thick and heavy - I thought my mixer might have a  seizure. Just make sure the dough doesn't crawl up the dough hook and try to leave the bowl.) Mix until ingredients form a ball, slowly working in the remaining 3/4 cup flour. In the last couple of minutes, add the raisins.

Transfer dough to counter. Knead for at least 10 minutes (I needed to knead for closer to 15). Dough should be firm, but still smooth and pliable. Make sure there is no raw flour in the mix. [The instructions say that at this point, the dough should pass the windowpane test - you should be able to pull some dough out from the mass and see through it, like a window pane - and should be between 77 and 81 degrees. My dough never did get that warm or windowpaney. I fretted a while over that. Then I quit and enjoyed a yummy bagel.] If the doug seems tacky or sticky, add a little more flour.

Divide the dough into equally sized pieces - 4 1/2 ounces for standard bagels. I don't have a food scale, so I just divided it into even-ish pieces, like so:

I used my handy bench scraper to lop the dough ball into pieces.
I do words, not shapes, so these aren't exactly even.

Form the pieces into rolls and cover them with a damp towel. Let them rest for about 20 minutes. After all that kneading, you'll need some rest, too.

Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper and spray them lightly with nonstick spray. Shape the bagels by sticking your thumbs into the center of each roll and stretching out an opening about 2 1/2 inches in diameter:

Again, I'm not great with shapes. I can live with that.

Mist the bagels lightly with nonstick spray and cover them loosely with plastic wrap. Let them sit for another 20 minutes or so. Pay attention to the 'or so.'

Now's when you get to check and see if the bagels are ready for the next phase, retarding. Fill a small bowl with room temperature water. Then play "Will it Sink or Will it Float?" Drop one bagel into the water. If it floats within 10 seconds, it's good to go. Pat it dry, return it to the pan.

If they don't float - and mine did not - they need to proof some more. Recipe says to let them proof for another 10 minutes or so - "or until a tester floats." I think mine needed another half hour of proofing. At least. Perhaps it was the high-protein flour substitution, or the windowpane fail. Or the room temperature or the phase of the moon. Dunno. It all worked out in the end, so I don't care.

When you have a batch of floaters, re-cover them and put them in the refrigerator overnight. Then take some ibuprofen for your sore arms and try not to think of bagels until morning. (They can actually stay in the fridge like that for 2 days - so all you plan-ahead mavens, you're welcome.)

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to boil, then add the baking soda.

Gently place bagels into the water, only putting in as many as will comfortably fit. Again, they should float within 10 seconds. If they're hugging the bottom of the pot, nudge them with a spoon until they pop up.

We're so close, my lovelies, so close...!

Boil them for a minute. A literal, actual minute. 60 seconds. Then flip them over and boil for another minute. If you want them very chewy, you can go 2 minutes per side.

While bagels are boiling, sprinkle parchment-lined baking sheets with cornmeal (you can use the same sheets the bagels rested on).

When all the bagels have been boiled, and are nestled on their baking sheets, stick them in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes. Then rotate the pans, switching shelves and turning each pan 180 degrees. After you rotate, lower the oven to 450 degrees and continue to bake for about another 5 minutes, or until the bagels are golden brown.

Remove from oven and let the bagels cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before you devour them.

I pre-sliced about half of the batch, then stashed them in the freezer. We've been munching on homemade bagels ever since.

Sure, sure, it's easier to buy them at the store. But when you make them yourself, you know what goes in them, and you can enjoy them with a little pride and satisfaction alongside your favorite schmear. And that tastes mighty good, y'all.

Oh yeah...!

PS - The leftover bagel water was a lovely rusty brown color. My oldest had a pair of bright white scrubs she needed to dye dingy for a play she was in. I looked at the hot bagel water. I looked at the scrubs. I looked at the hot bagel water. And, oh yes I did. Worked like a charm and she had the best smelling costume in the show.

Lemon Chicken Soup with Pasta

The weather's been crazy around here - not at all like a typical winter. 60 degrees for a few days, then the temps plummet to below freezing, but with no real snow. Then back up. Then back down. Like a bad yo-yo trick with no cool payoff. 'Cuz yo-yo tricks are so cool.

This soup recipe actually works for both kinds of weather - it's warm and satisfying for those cold days, but has a touch of lemony brightness that keeps it from being too heavy. I saw two different versions of this soup within days of each other, so I figured the interwebverse wanted me to make it. So I did. And now you can, too.

Notes:

• The recipe I used came from Ms. Shiny Teeth herself, Giada de Laurentiss. She used rotisserie chicken, which is nice if you happen to have one lying about, or if you don't mind spending 7 bucks for a tiny bird. I didn't and I do, so I poached a couple of chicken breasts and shredded them up - and they worked just fine.
• I subbed the Pecorino Romano with Parmesan. Also worked dandy.
• Recipe calls for spaghetti - I've also seen it with orzo. I imagine you could use whatever small pasta you happen to have lying about. I had whole wheat spaghetti, so I used that.

'Nuf notes - start cookin'!

Lemon Chicken Soup with Pasta
Serves about 6

6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
1 dried bay leaf
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 medium carrots, peeled & sliced into 1/4-inch pieces
1 celery stalk, thinly sliced
1 cup spaghetti, broken into 2-inch pieces (or other small pasta)
2 cups cooked chicken breast, diced or shredded into bite-sized pieces
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

In a large stock pot over medium-high heat, bring broth, lemon juice and bay leaf to a boil.
Add onions, carrots and celery; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 6 - 8 minutes, or until veggies are tender.
Add pasta and cook until tender, about 6 - 8 minutes. Stir occasionally.
Add chicken and heat through, 2 - 3 minutes.
Remove bay leaf.
Remove pot from heat and stir in cheese and parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Nutella Fudge

Having recovered from the Christmas food coma, it's time to induce the New Year's Eve/Day food coma. 

Oh, you know you wanna.

We're not big partiers and start yawning about 10 p.m., so we don't have anything big or fancy planned for tonight. We'll enjoy some double-strength party mix:

For extra tasty goodness, double the amount of ingredients in the secret sauce.

And the elixir of the winter gods, otherwise known as the family Russian Tea:

Let no instant tea/tang-laden imitators pass your lips, oh best beloveds.
I'll share the secrets to this magic brew very soon. And you will thank me.

And that will be plenty for us simple folk.

No matter what you've got planned for New Year's Eve or Day, you still have time to make some lovely Nutella Fudge to share. Or snarf down all for yourself.

I had already made the Mister's favorite Christmas fudge - your basic marshmallow cream based fudge - when some dear friends from California paid us a visit. 

Harper sharing one of her video creations with Silvie.

Phil watching one of Asia's video creations.

Silvie wistfully recollected some Nutella fudge I had made on their last visit a couple of years ago. I'd planned on making her some more before this visit, but circumstances thwarted my plan. I hate thwarting of any kind. So I whipped up a batch for her just in time for a game night with them and Phil's folks. It's a mix of Nutella and dark chocolate, and it has a sprinkling of coarse sea salt on top, which keeps it from being so cloyingly sweet that you can only eat one piece at a time. It works, because most of it was gone by the time we went home.

I've used a couple of recipes in the past - this one is based on a Giada De Laruentiis recipe and comes from the Cookin' Canuck. What are you waiting for?! Go make some fudgy goodness to ring in the New Year on a sweet note.

Chocolate Nutella Fudge with Sea Salt

Makes about 50 3/4-inch pieces

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 ounces (about a cup) chocolate chips (recipe calls for 60% cacao chips; I used Hershey's Special Dark)

1 cup Nutella, room temperature

3 teaspoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Sea salt - about 1/2 teaspoon (I didn't measure; I sprinkled until I liked the look of it)

Line an 8 x 8-inch pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving a couple of inches overlap on the sides.

In a medium-sized glass or metal bowl, stir the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, chocolate, Nutella and butter together.

Put a medium sized pot or skillet on the stove and bring an inch or two of water to a gentle simmer. Set the bowl in/over the pot to make a double boiler. 

Stir the mixture until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth; it could take anywhere from 5 - 10 minutes.

Pour the mixture into your prepared pan and smooth the top. Sprinkle with sea salt. Refrigerate until firm, at least two hours.

Lift the fudge out of the pan, remove the foil/parchment liner, and slice into 3/4-inch pieces.

If it's not gobbled up right away, you can store it in the fridge in an airtight container or wrapped in plastic wrap and foil.