Oh, Fudge!

Last week, my friend Red and I took our annual trip to Old Mystic Village to putter around in the shops. One store we especially like is Franklin's General Store. Franklin's has 20 some odd varieties of fudge and free samples. The flavor du jour was pumpkin which was ok. I bought a brick of their Snickers fudge. Mmmmm, too die for! I decided to recreate the recipe.

I started with a basic recipe for Foolproof Fudge. Found at the Eagle Brand site. I alter the basic recipe. I just dump in 2 bags of chocolate chips and I use 2 T. of vanilla extract.

To make the fudge into snickers, I melted 2 bags ( 5.5 oz) of Werther caramels with sweetened condensed milk using the same method as melting the chocolate. No vanilla extract. Into the melted mixture, I added 1 1/2 cups unsalted peanuts.

In a greased 8" x 8" square pan, I poured half the fudge mixture. Then I spread the caramel layer and let that cool a little bit. Then I had to reheat the fudge mixture to make it spreadable and then spread that on top. Refrigerate to set.

Since this was the test batch, it still needs tweaking. I give it a C. Next time around, I will look for the square caramels as the Werthers have a different consistancy. The store I was at didn't have the square ones. I will also melt that bag without the sweetened condensed milk. I thought that would help melt the caramels. It worked a treat, but it doesn't set up as hard as I thought it would. At room temp, the middle layer becomes gooey. I would also use lightly salted peanuts as I think that would enhance the taste.

The presentation isn't all that pretty, but it eats well.