Foodie Friday: Fudge Fail and Fudge Win

It's Foodie Friday! Foodie Friday is my weekly feature that gives you a window into my kitchen. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to read cookbooks, and I love to inspire people to give vegan food a chance. Thus, Foodie Friday was whipped up and baked to perfection.

I feel like I make macaroni and cheese every week. That might not be exactly true, but the leftovers last long enough that we eat it for a while, and I've posted four different versions (1, 2, 3, 4) since the end of January. That just goes to show how many delicious ways there are to veganize mac and cheese! My latest attempt, baked mac and cheeze from Robin Robertson's 1,000 Vegan Recipes, was no exception.

I had been wanting to make this for a while because miso paste is among the ingredients and I was intrigued by the idea of miso and cheesy noodles together. Once it's all put together, of course, you don't taste the miso. Since Jason doesn't like "dry" pasta, I doubled the amount of sauce and it baked up nicely without sucking up all of the ooey-gooeyness that makes macaroni and cheese so good. I served it with Lightlife Smoked Style Smart Sausages that I coined and toasted up in a pan with a spray of olive oil. We had salad, too, but who wants to read a food blog about lettuce? Not this vegan.


Another 1,000 Vegan recipe that I tried this week was for basic mashed potatoes. I've never followed a recipe for mashed taters--I always eyeball and estimate the quantities and cooking times and it turns out well every time--but I figured I'd try this one just to get one step closer to making all 1,000. They turned out fine, if a bit bland. They're called "basic," and that they were. I served them with sautéed grape tomatoes and Lightlife Savory Chick'n Smart Tenders.

And that brings me to my epic fudge fail. The other night I promised Jason that I would make him the chocolate-peanut butter fudge from 1,000 Vegan Recipes. How hard can fudge be, right? You don't even have to cook it.

Well, apparently fudge is hard, because I followed this recipe from start to finish TWICE and both times it ended up as pebbles. No, seriously--look at it!

I had nice melty chocolate and peanut butter in the bowl one second, and the next I had cocoa puff cereal. I blame the powdered sugar. Maybe the recipe had a misprint, maybe I suck at following directions... who knows? All I know is that I stayed up until midnight trying to make my husband some fudge and when he got home from work in the middle of the night I didn't have a sweet treat waiting for him. I was exhausted and pissed off.

For the first batch, I tried to melt the chocolate in the microwave because the recipe said to. Instead of melting, it filled my kitchen with smoke. My cats were all, "Huh? Wha? Forest fire?" But the smoke alarm didn't go off. That damn thing goes off if I so much as turn on the oven, but not when my kitchen looks like a scene from The Fog. Nice.

I threw out the scorched first batch (in the silver bowl), but I kept the second batch--I melted the chocolate on the stove and it was perfect. You know, until I added the powdered sugar. The second batch is at least useful as an ice cream topping.

Today I was ready to redeem myself. I tried a different fudge recipe, chocolate smoosh fudge from 1,000 Vegan Recipes, which doesn't call for powdered sugar. It's just chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, and dried fruit. Oh, and rum. Because pirates like fudge too.

The result:


Redemption is sweet.