Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter Fudge

 

Peanut butter and chocolate are the two things that I love, but rarely put them together. Why? I have no idea, because they are so good together!

A few years, I would have cringed over the thought. I didn’t grow up with peanut butter cups or anything of the sort. I liked peanut butter and I liked chocolate, but I’d never had them together. The closest thing I came to that was a Snickers bar.

So why this fudge? I wanted to something different. I have made dark chocolate fudge already, so why not add a new dimension to it? Although I had thought this up for some time, I had put off making it because

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Chocolate Fruit and Nut Clusters

This is another recipe for homemade dark chocolates, which were part of J’s special gift. These are one of the simplest types of chocolates to make, although it still involves tempering chocolate. You can make these morsels without tempering,

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Coffee Ganache Filled Dark Chocolates

These homemade chocolates bring together the wonderful flavor combination of chocolate and coffee together in one bite. They simply are to live for! They are vegan-friendly, dairy-free and super-easy to make. Any chocoholic will love them.  These were made to go into my chocolate selection box.

There are no specific

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Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

 
The wonderful flavor marriage of peanut butter and chocolate is well-known. This version of the classic, commercial peanut butter cups are tastier, and dare I say it… healthier! Once you make these delicious morsels, you will never buy the inferior commercial ones again. These were added to my delicious homemade chocolate selection.

The shell is made with dark (bitter/semi-sweet) chocolate, and the filling is made with peanut butter and a little sugar. The best part of making things at home is that you can control the quality of the ingredients, and the relative amount of sugar added.

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“Nutella” and Roasted Hazelnut Filled Dark Chocolates

These delicious morsels were part of the collection of dark chocolates that I made for J a little while back. The filled chocolates were given names, such as Bounty balls, coffee delight, fruit & nut clusters, peanut butter, truffles and hazelnut surprise. Hopefully, I will get around to putting up all the “recipes” of them up pretty soon.

The hazelnut surprise consisted of a dark chocolate shell, which encased a dark chocolate and hazelnut filling (read homemade Nutella), and a perfectly roasted, whole hazelnut.

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Dark Chocolate Treat Selection

I’m still here… living, breathing, eating, sleeping and working. Yes, I said working. This is the reason for my laxness in updating my blog. It’s not that I don’t cook every day now, I do. I just don’t take the time to write up the recipes on my blog – I’m a lazy ass! I seem to spend most evenings passing out on my zero-gravity recliner chair. There is a backlog of entries that I need to post, and this is one of them.

A few weeks ago, it was our tenth anniversary. I wanted to make something special for J. Commercial tat is never the same as something that you can make yourself – it’s special because it’s unique.

Since he’s a chocolate-fan, I decided

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Bounty Balls

After the success of my vegan and gluten-free coconut macaroons, I knew that I had to adapt the recipe to make bite-sized portions of the wonderful goodness. Instead of drizzling these coconut babies with chocolate, I simply enrobed them fully in dark chocolate. The results are fantastic – you are greeted with a wonderful crack of dark chocolates on biting into these delicious lovelies; once inside you will experience a lightly sweet, succulent and moist coconut interior, which is not too dissimilar to Bounty bars.

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Honeycomb Toffee

 

Crunchy bars were one of my favorite “chocolate bars” as a kid. It was the delicious and crunchy honeycomb center, which was covered with milk chocolate that made them so enticing. At that age, I used to wonder how they used to pump the bubbles into the confection.

Honeycomb toffee is also known as cinder, sponge and Yellowman toffee. The toffee itself is one of the easiest sweets (candies) you can make with just three

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English Toffee

  

This crunchy butter candy is known in America as English toffee. I have no idea why. The toffee I grew up with was soft and chewy, which is basically American caramels. Now British caramel is also another kettle of fish, one that I will not go into at this moment in time.

To the British audience, this toffee is similar to a Dime (Daim) bar. It’s crunchy, buttery, sweet and absolutely moreish. It’s also very similar to the American Skor bar, Heath bar, and the filling of the World famous

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Badam Burfi (Almond Candy)

  

I have fond memories of my mother picking me up from junior school and occasionally stopping off at her Indian friend, Dolly’s shop. I don’t even remember which shop was Dolly’s, what she looked like, or what her shop sold… but I do remember that she used to have a limited selection of mithai (Indian sweets). We’d buy a very small selection (as our budget didn’t allow for more), but more often than not, we’d have jalebis or burfi (barfi) of some sort.

Many years have passed since then. When I visited my parents (who still live in the same place for over 40+ years) in the mid 2000’s, I noticed a couple of shops (directly opposite each other) who specialized in mithai. I was like a child at the window of a sweet (candy) shop. The shops were well lit and the displays were vast. Now that I could afford it, I had to buy one of everything!

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