Nigella's Chocolate Fudge

Six months ago I joined up with I Heart Cooking Clubs to celebrate the wonderful and eloquent Nigella Lawson. Armed with my copy of Nigella Express, I was excited to get cooking and testing out Nigella's recipes. Right out of the gate, I loved Nigella's recipes and her style of writing. Cooking up one hit after another for my picky family, we grew to love her recipes. After thirty or so of Nigella's recipes, Nigella Express holds a very special spot on my cookbook shelf.

One of our family favorites is this recipe for Nigella's Chocolate Fudge. In Nigella Express, Nigella adds pistachios to her fudge, but my son is allergic to nuts so we omit them. This is just your standard recipe for fudge using condensed milk, but the entire family loves it and most importantly my son can eat it, therefore it makes us all happy.

Chocolate Pistachio Fudge
Adapted from Nigella Express
12 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped (I use a bag of semi or milk chocolate chips)
(1) 14 oz. can condensed milk
pinch of salt
1 cup shelled pistachios (I omit these and sometimes sub dried fruit)
2 tablespoons butter

Melt the chopped chocolate, condensed milk, butter and salt in a heavy-bottomed pan on low heat. Put the nuts into a freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin until broken up into both big and little pieces. Add the nuts to the melted chocolate and condensed milk and stir well to mix. Pour this mixture into a 9-inch square aluminum foil pan, smoothing the top. Let the fudge cool and then refrigerate until set. You can then cut into small pieces approximately 1-3/4 by 1-3/4 inches in size. Cutting 7x7 lines in the pan to give 64 pieces best achieves this. Once cut, you can keep it in the freezer, no need to thaw; just eat right away. Makes 64 pieces of fudge.

Notes/Results: This fudge is a family favorite. It is quick and easy to adapt to your taste. I love pistachios and I'm sure they would be wonderful, but we usually make the fudge plain. I have toyed with the idea of adding dried fruit, but haven't experimented with that just yet. Since we are celebrating Easter over at IHCC, I bought some cute little Easter cupcake holders, filled them with the fudge, and topped them with some cute little bunnies. My son is allergic to flour, eggs, nuts so he can't have a traditional cupcake. These little fudge cupcakes were the perfect treat for him (and the rest of the family too)!



Head on over to I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what everyone else cooked up for their Easter Basket.

This is the last week we are celebrating Nigella Lawson over at I Heart Cooking Clubs. Starting next week, we will be featuring the recipes of Mark Bittman. I'm looking forward to cooking my way through his recipes!!