Author: Nicole

I couldn’t help by smile when I spotted this Giant Donut Cake Pan at Williams-Sonoma over the weekend. I probably would have had an even bigger smile on my face if they had had a fully-baked donut cake out on display! The cake pan set includes two round pans that each make half of the donut. After baking the halves are stacked together, then you can glaze them like your favorite type of donut! Each of the donut pan halves – which are essentially ring pans and can be used for recipes that call for a ring pan when you’re not baking donuts – has a capacity of 5 cups, which is about the same capacity as an 8-inch round cake pan. The set includes a recipe with it, but you will be able to adapt other cake recipes that would otherwise make an 8-inch layer cake to this pan very easily.

When making a cake that sandwiches two separated layers into one big cake, I would recommend leveling out the edge where the two cakes meet. Even if your cakes look very even, you’ll get a much neater finished product if you trim a bit off to blend the edges.

Instant coffee is a great ingredient to have in the kitchen pantry if you like to bake. Many recipes, especially recipes involving chocolate, call for either a small amount of brewed coffee or simply for a bit of instant coffee to be added to highlight the darker chocolate notes in the recipe. It’s very convenient to be able to whip up a strong cup of coffee with instant coffee, rather than brewing a whole pot to put just half a cup into a cake. Even stronger than instant coffee is instant espresso. Instant espressos have a more intense, and usually much more complex, flavor than regular instant coffee. They can be a better choice for baking because they add a lot more to a recipe than just a vague hint of coffee flavor.

In their most recent issue (March 2010), Cook’s Illustrated included a taste-test of three different instant espresso brands in a batch of brownies (tasters still thought the real thing was best for drinking). Their favorite was Caffe D’Vita Imported Premium Instant Espresso, which had “dark, deep, fruity, toast-y” notes to it. They also liked Cafe Bustelo Espresso Instant Coffee for it’s “rich fruitiness. The brand of instant espresso that I like to bake with, Medaglia D’Oro, was one that they liked although it was not their favorite. Tasters said that it added a “good complexity.” They won’t sell these in all markets (although I have seen them in Target before), but you’ll definitely find some of these brands at stores like Williams-Sonoma and specialty grocery stores.

Perhaps next time they’ll throw some Starbucks Via into the taste test. It’s not instant espresso, but it’s very easy to work with and does have a lot of complexity to it – especially when you compare it to other instant coffee products.

While there is nothing like a full-sized cake or pie, there is something very appealing about little desserts. They’re cute – a shrunken down version of their full-sized cousins – and can pack in a lot of flavor. Best of all, you can usually eat more than one without feeling guilty. So I’m easily tempted by miniature versions of desserts, and when I saw a picture of some miniature chocolate cream pies in a recent issue of Sunset magazine, I wanted to give them a try. A few tweaks to the original recipe and I had a whole batch of tasty, mini cream pies to enjoy!

These little pies have a great chocolate flavor to them, and a consistency that is very similar to chocolate pudding. They’re easy to handle because the filling is quite firm. In fact, it may start to firm up as you spoon it out into the mini crusts after preparing it. Don’t worry if the tops of the mini pies look a little irregular as they set. The whipped cream used to top the pies not only lightens up the chocolate, but it disguises any little imperfections in the filling. I used dark chocolate and the filling had a nice chocolate flavor that wasn’t too sweet. Use sweetened whipped cream to finish these if you like them a little sweeter, or simply substitute a semisweet or milk chocolate instead.

The crusts for these little pies are very easy to make. You’ll notice right away that, unlike many other graham cracker-type crusts, there is no butter in the recipe. Instead, the crumbs are held together with egg white. This makes for a crisper, firmer crust that is easy to take out of the mini muffin cups after baking, as well as for a crust that will hold up well to the chocolate cream filling without becoming soggy. Don’t worry if the crusts seem a bit hard after baking; just fill them up and chill them and they’ll be just right when you’re ready to eat! I added a little instant coffee powder (Starbucks Via, actually, since I really like that for baking) to my crusts to give them a hint of mocha flavor.

These mini pies can easily be made a day in advance and stored in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Add the whipped cream just before serving and give them a dusting of cocoa powder to finish them off. These are great for a crowd, and perhaps even better as a bite-sized treat to share with a loved one on a special occasion – with leftovers, of course!

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Truffles are not particularly difficult things to make when it comes to crafting candies and chocolates. This means that they’re a great choice for a fancy treat that you can make at home with just a little bit of practice. What can be difficult about making truffles is making them truly exceptional, but with a little bit of guidance, you can make yours just as gourmet as any you can find at an upscale chocolatier. Truffles: 50 Deliciously Decadent Homemade Chocolate Treats is a cookbook that happens to offer up just that guidance, with 50 recipes for all different types of truffles.

The book starts off with an introduction that covers the most important part of making truffles: choosing the chocolate you are going to work with. Since truffles are all about the chocolate flavor and don’t have as many ingredients as, for instance, a cake, it is crucial to use a high quality chocolate that has a flavor you like. The book goes on to describe chocolate from several high-end suppliers, including Valhrona and Callebaut, so you know what you’re in for with each. It then goes on to discuss truffle-making techniques, from rolling the centers to dipping the truffles in tempered chocolate for a smooth shell. There is even a page of troubleshooting tips to help you through any problems that might arise as you work.

The truffle recipes themselves are divided into chapters on chocolate flavors, fruit flavors, nut and spice flavors, and “grown-up” flavors, such as coffee- infused and liqueur-infused truffles. The technique is similar for all of the recipes, but the book ranges from classic ganache truffles that are made with cream, as well as truffles made with butter, creme fraiche and even soymilk, for those who don’t use dairy. There are more truffle-making tips and plenty of truffle photos sprinkled throughout the book, as well.

Homemade truffles are quite easy to make and fun to play around with for all occasions. You can start with some Mint Chocolate Truffles if that’s a flavor combination that you like. If you want to try your hand at making some other homemade candies, you can also take a look at the books Brittles, Barks and Bonbons and The Field Guide to Candy in addition to this book.

A slice of toast is always a great complement to breakfast foods, especially egg dishes, whether I’m eating at home or out at a diner. Whole wheat and sourdough make great toast, but I would have to say that cinnamon raisin bread makes better toast still. Most cinnamon raisin bread – including this homemade cinnamon raisin bread – has a buttery, sweet flavor to it to begin with and is just dense enough to soak up a lot of butter when you slather it onto a freshly toasted slice. It’s a small indulgence, but a good one.

Homemade cinnamon raisin bread is a great thing to make because you not only get to enjoy the taste of a freshly toasted slice, but you get to smell the bread while it bakes. The bread is easy to make and bakes in a loaf pan. You can do the initial kneading in a stand mixer with a dough hook attached if you don’t want to do it by hand, but you will need to clear some counter space to form the loaf by hand before its final rise. The dough is rolled out and spread with a brown sugar and butter mixture before being rolled back up into that final loaf. It’s a thin layer that only makes a small swirl in the finished loaf (it’s easy to see in person, however), but it does add a lot of flavor. I like to incorporate the cinnamon and the raisins into the bread dough, rather than trying to stick them only into the brown sugar swirl in the loaf so that they are well-distributed.

This loaf will keep well for a couple of days if you store it in an airtight container, or well-wrapped with plastic wrap on the kitchen counter. It is best to wait until it has cooled completely before slicing, but is easy to slice and makes a delicious piece of toast.
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You don’t need a specialty pan to bake a cake shaped like a heart. All you really need is a sharp knife and a regular cake pan and you can simply trim down a round or square cake to be a little more romantic. This is an easy fix if your kitchen space is limited and you don’t want to clutter it up with pans you don’t use often enough. If you do have room for another pan that would be ideal for Valentine’s Day and other romantic occasions, try picking up the Wilton Heart Tasty Fill Cake Set instead of an ordinary heart-shaped pan.

The Wilton Heart Tasty Fill Cake Set makes a fairly plain looking cake that has a surprise inside: a heart-shaped tunnel that can be filled with ice cream, whipped cream, fruit, frosting or any other filling you can dream up. The pan is designed to bake a round cake in two halves, one with the bottom point of a heart and another with the top domes. When the cake is baked and the pieces stacked together, you will be able to see the heart in every slice. Pretty sweet, isn’t it?

A piece of cake can look a bit lonely on a plate all by itself. Dressing up the plate with a little garnish or a little sauce can go a long way in making a plain chocolate cake look like something very special – perfect for a romantic dinner, a dinner party or just when you want to do something nice for yourself.

Adding a few fresh berries or a small dollop of whipped cream is the easiest way to add to the presentation. A sprig of mint looks nice on chocolate desserts and ice creams. But these are simple garnishes, and to really make an impact, you’ll want to add a swirl of sauce or a splash of coulis to the plate. Chocolate sauce and a fruit coulis (smooth puree) add a little extra flavor to each bite of your dessert, and you can be a lot more playful with them than you can be with a sprig of mint.

You’ll want a small pastry bottle – a plastic bottle with a small tip – or a small pastry bag to do your decorating with. Transfer a thin sauce to the bottle – storebought caramel sauce, chocolate sauce and vanilla sauce will work well, as will any thin fruit puree or creme anglaise – and squeeze a design of spirals or swirls onto the plate before adding your dessert. For an even more impressive effect, pipe a flat area of one color of sauce. Use another sauce to pipe straight lines through the blank palate created by sauce number one, then drag a toothpick through both sauces at a right angle to the lines you just drew. The result is pictured above and is a beautiful canvas on which to plate the perfect dessert (I used vanilla and caramel for that photo).

Are you rooting for Peyton Manning and the Colts this weekend, or Drew Brees and the Saints? Even if you’re one of the many viewers who tunes in to the Super Bowl just to see what million-dollar commercials, you’re probably going to want to stock up on snacks for the big game this weekend because it is one of the biggest party days of the year. The savory stuff, like chili, chips, dip and guacamole, are standards for Super Bowl parties and easy to come by. I’d like to focus on dessert a bit, since a nice sweet snack will finish off the 4th quarter on a high note, even if your team isn’t in the lead.

Indianapolis doesn’t have a signature dessert in the way that some other cities do, but if you don’t mind a New Orleans dessert at your party, Homemade Beignets – the powdered sugar dusted donuts so popular in the southern city – are a great party option. Fresh, hot donuts are sure to win over any football fan (or other party-goer). For Colts supporters, you might want to simply tint some icing and decorate some cookies or cupcakes in white and blue to show your team spirit. For instance, you can use Black and White Cookies, make a double batch of the white icing and dye half of it blue.

For a more directly football themed dessert, you should definitely try making Chocolate Football Cakes, which are like cupcakes in the shape of little footballs. They’re made from a sheet cake and glazed to give them a smooth, finished look. A Helmet-shaped or football-shaped pan can easily give you a full-sized cake to decorate in support of your favorite team.

Other good choices for a party are bite-sized desserts that will travel well and keep easily during the game. Brownies and blondies are always good options. Magic Bars offer something for everyone and are very easy to make. A batch of homemade S’mores Fudge is a nice choice, too, and can be made well in advance.

Calling something a coffee cake is, more often than not, just an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. I don’t need an excuse to eat cake for breakfast, but I am a huge fan of coffee cake nevertheless. This coffee cake does have a little bit of redeeming nutritional value so, just in case you ever feel guilty reaching for that second slice with your morning coffee, you can bake this up and not think twice about it. The coffee cake is made with whole grain flour and is packed with antioxidant-rich cherries. Of course, it is also buttery, tender and topped off with a crispy cinnamon streusel, too.

This coffee cake is very easy to make because the streusel and the batter start off with the same base. You simply set some of the mixture of flour, butter and sugar aside after mixing them together for the streusel and add it back before baking. The cake is very soft, tender and moist. It does have a subtle whole wheat flavor to it, but it doesn’t have any of the heaviness that you might associate with whole wheat baked goods. Since the butter is blended in with the flour, it really gives the cake a lovely light, even texture. White whole wheat flour is the best choice for this recipe because it has a slightly milder flavor than regular whole wheat and makes for a slightly sweeter streusel. If you don’t have it, I would opt for a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and all purpose.

You can use fresh cherries, jarred cherries or frozen cherries for this recipe. With frozen cherries, you can either defrost and drain then before adding, or simply add a minute or two to the baking time to account for the face that they will make the batter a littler colder than fresh cherries will. I like sweet black cherries and Morello cherries, but even very tart cherries are a good option for this recipe if you like things a little less sweet. As it is, this is not a particularly sweet coffee cake – just sweet enough to keep you wanting more.

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Bundt pans are cake pans that bake up a cake that isn’t quite like anything you can get from another pan. They are usually 10 or 12-inches in diameter and are up to 5 inches deep, with a hole in the center that ensures that the deep cake bakes evenly while it is in the oven. The sides of a bundt pan are almost vertical and the pans, which are typically made of cast aluminum, have fluted or ridged designs that make the finished cake look very impressive. Over the years, the pan style became so popular that manufacturers started to branch out into more creative designs, not limiting themselves to the traditional ridged round cakes. You can also now find bundt pans in silicone and other materials.

Bundt pans were derived from ceramic German Kugelhopf pans, which bake tall, round and (usually) yeasted sweet breads or cakes. The cast aluminum version was trademarked in 1950 by the founder of NordicWare, the largest and certainly most well known maker of bundt-shaped pans. The pans were not popular with bakers at first, but after the Tunnel of Fudge cake – which was baked in a bundt pan -won 2nd in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off, sales of the pan took off and it is now one of the best selling pans in North America, with over 60 million sold. It is easy to see why, because the cakes are very stylish and, unlike layered cakes, look impressive without needing a drop of frosting. There are tens of thousands of recipes out there calling for bundt pans, and you won’t find another pan that can do the job as well.

Grocery stores, as a general rule, have a very limited supply of cupcake wrappers to choose from. Plain white, silver and an assortment of pastel pinks, yellows and blues are the standards. They serve their purpose, but when you spend the time baking cupcakes from scratch and decorating them by hand, you want your wrapper to look just as good as the cake inside of it (especially if you like to photograph your handiwork). As a result, I’m always on a lookout for great new cupcake wrappers to add to my collection. Safari-inspired wrappers that come in both a zebra print and a cheetah pattern fall into that category. These are full-size (standard, not mini or jumbo) liners that will definitely add a little bit of flair to a regular batch of cupcakes or muffins.

There is no need to match the type of muffin you’re making to the wrapper, but a Zebra Cupcake would be a nice touch to match the zebra wrapper. And if you want to theme your cupcakes, you might want to consider picking up a batch of jungle animal cupcake toppers made from sugar to finish off your creations.

Alfajores are a type of small cookie that is found in Latin America, where two plain cookies sandwich a layer of dulce de leche. The cookies are then often sprinkled with powdered sugar or rolled in a bit of shredded coconut to finish them off. As it is with so many cookies and cakes, there are many ways to make alfajores. Some are very cake-like, while others pack in so much dulce de leche filling that they verge on being candies. Still others use different fillings than the traditional dulce de leche for some variety. I’ve had a few variations, but the simpler renditions always appeal to me. I like a butter cookie with a generous spread of dulce de leche inside, and perhaps a bit of shredded coconut rolled around the edges when I have some handy.

These cookies are simple butter cookies, with a hint of vanilla added to them. They’re very tender, with a lovely buttery flavor to them, and they take on a nice chewiness once they’ve been filled with the dulce de leche. They’re quick and easy to make because, although they are sandwich cookies, the dough is simply dropped onto the baking sheet and left to spread during baking, not rolled out or sliced. That said, because you’re not using a cookie cutter to get the sizes exact, try to make sure that each ball of dough you put onto the baking sheet is about the same size.

For the filling, you can use homemade dulce de leche or store-bought. The amount that you use will vary by exactly how much filling you want inside your cookies (I like a moderate amount, but others like to pile it in!). Keep in mind that it may ooze out the sides of the cookies a bit if the dulce de leche is on the thin side, so don’t quite spread the filling to the edge of the cookies. If it does run out, roll the edges of the cookies in some shredded coconut to add a little more flavor and help keep that filling in place.
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Once, chocolate was a food reserved only for society’s elite. This is true of many different civilizations, from ancient Mayans to Spanish nobility during the 1500s. Chocolate is not a difficult thing to find these days and you can buy it just about anywhere. But every chocolate fan knows that not all chocolate is create equal. The book Discover Chocolate: The Ultimate Guide to Buying, Tasting, and Enjoying Fine Chocolate is all about finding the best chocolate you can, from how it is made to how to taste it in order to get the most out of every bite

Discover Chocolate is a very unusual book in that it doesn’t just give you a straight history of where chocolate comes from or how chocolate is made. It does include plenty of information on how chocolate gets from bean to bar, but the focus of the book is on tasting chocolate. It teaches you to be a chocolate connoisseur, and much like being a wine connoisseur, that means that you need to learn how to buy chocolate, how to taste chocolate and learn how to describe the flavors of chocolate – all so you can have a better understanding of what you like best. There are some great little exercises and charts to help you learn what flavors you might taste when tasting chocolate, as well as definitions of terms like “snap” and “melt” that will help you understand what other chocophiles mean when they describe a chocolate. The final chapter is about pairings of wine, spirits and other flavors with chocolate, to give you a starting point for expanding your chocolate horizons even further.

The book is a good read for a chocolate lover, especially for someone who really loves chocolate and is serious about enjoying it more (on a parallel with someone who loves wine and wants to learn more about it). The only drawback to the book is that it doesn’t come with any chocolate samples. Fortunately, that is easily remedied. I’d pick up a bar to nibble on while you read, but I’ll warn you that you might want to pick up a variety to sample and compare yourself after you finish!

I like that fact that bread pudding is a cross between a custard and a cake. I also like that it tends to be a family-style dessert, baked in a big casserole dish or a loaf pan and and portioned out into both big and small servings. It can be made in advance and can also serve a crowd. But as nice as it is as a family-style, comfort food dish, it can be just as nice when it is put in a smaller package made into something a little more elegant. With single serving bread puddings, you get the flavor of all that comfort food in a dressed up package.

These Individual Nutella Bread Puddings are very rich tasting and not too sweet. There is quite a lot of Nutella – a creamy chocolate hazelnut spread – in the bread pudding mixture, so these have a nice hazelnut flavor to the, as well as a good chocolate flavor. Adding in some chocolate chips really ups the amount of chocolate you taste in each bite – especially when this bread pudding is served hot and the chips are still melty. These are also tasty when chilled, though leftovers will heat up well in the microwave.

These puddings are easy enough to make for everyday occasions, but they make a fantastic and easy-to-make special occasion dessert as well. Valentine’s Day and anniversaries in particular are perfect for a chocolaty dessert like this, where you can give your loved one his or her own serving, or the two of you can split one. I like these plain, but a little dollop of whipped cream or even a bit of vanilla ice cream melting on top of a hot bread pudding would really finish things off well. (more…)

This week (and this upcoming week of Jan 31- Feb 5) was restaurant week in Los Angeles. This means that some of the restaurants around the city are participating in an event called DineLA where they offer special, three-course set menus at a special price. I took advantage of this to take in a lunch at Spago. The restaurant was lovely, the food was delicious, but I have to say that the highlight of the meal was meeting Wolfgang Puck himself. He made the rounds of the dining room and patio several times, shaking hands with guests and even sitting down a few times to chat. I think that I was the first to break out a camera, but I was certainly not the only one in the restaurant who wanted to capture the moment and many cameras popped out as he posed with diners. I was a little flustered (perhaps the food blogger’s equivalent of being slightly starstruck), but found him to be nothing by incredibly friendly. Also, for the record, I think that he looks much younger in person than he does in photos and on TV. Lest you think that he was only making a show, he also went back to the kitchen (my table shared a glass wall with the kitchen) to work on the food.

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Laminated dough is a baking term that can show up from time to time that is often not fully described. Lamination is term for the process of alternating layers of dough and butter when making pastry. The dough is wrapped around butter (so that the butter is completely enclosed in dough and cannot slip out), the “package” is rolled out, folded over to double the number of layers, and then the whole thing is repeated. Each time the dough is folded, it is called a “turn.” The more turns your laminated dough has, the more flaky your finished pastry will be. Laminated doughs include puff pastry, croissant dough and danish dough.

Technically the fat used to make a laminated dough could be something other than butter and the name would be the same, but the best tasting and best looking laminated doughs use butter. Butter is essentially made of milk fat/solids and water. When heated, the water in butter turns to steam. The thin layers of butter in laminated dough cause the dough to puff up and rise during baking, giving croissants and puff pastry their layered and crispy look, and the milk solids in the butter cause the pastry to brown – and, of course, taste delicious.

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are great because they deliver all the chocolate and all the buttery flavor of a regular chocolate chip cookie, with a little bit more texture and a delicious oaty, nutty flavor on top. When you toast nuts, you bring out their nuttiness even more, and this same thing works on oats. So, I added some toasted, sweetened granola right into this batch of cookies where I might have otherwise just used oatmeal. I got cookies that delivered even more flavor than before.

The cookies are thick and seem hearty, because of the granola. They are slightly chewy and crisp on the outside. You can definitely taste the flavors from the granola, whether yours is sweetened with maple syrup, honey or sugar, in the cookies, too.

I just used a plain granola (Cascadian Farms Organic Oats and Honey, to be specific), without any added nuts or dried fruits, so that I could really find the granola flavor in the finished cookies. I added in chocolate chips and chopped, toasted pecans separately. You can use just about any type of granola you like in these, whether it has nuts or dried fruits already added. The only thing you need to do to prep your granola is to chop it into small pieces – chocolate chip or almond sized clusters – before mixing it in so that you get an even distribution of granola throughout the cookies.
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While I really like Nordicware’s Stadium Pan for its great design and versatility for celebrating sporting events of all kinds, it’s not the best pan to pick up if you really want to show support for your favorite team. It is a bit difficult to decorate in your team colors, for instance (and looks so good plain that you never really need frosting anyway). To show a little more team spirit for an event like the upcoming Super Bowl, you might want to pick up one of Wilton’s Football Pans or Helmet Pans. These pans each hold the same amount of batter as a standard 9×13-inch cake (or 1 cake mix) and make cakes that are very sporty, but very easy to dress up, whether you support the Saints or the Colts in the big game. The pans are made of annodized aluminum and are fairly lightweight. To ensure that your cake pops out of the pan without a hitch, make sure to grease and flour the pan before pouring in the batter.

 Aprons are useful tools to have in the kitchen. I say tools because they can do quite a lot: protect your clothes, give you a place to wipe your hands or hang a dishtowel, and even provide you with pockets to hold extra spices, spoons and spatulas that you just don’t have room for. And if the apron is cute and fun to wear, that is even better. Flirty Aprons is a company that specializes in cute and – of course – flirty aprons. They have some great patterns to choose from, all with wide fabric belts that tie into a big bow and a beautiful ruffled trim. I recently got to test out one of their most delightful designs: the Frosted Cupcake apron. The apron is made from soft cotton and has a nice strong feel to it. I like the pockets and I love the cut, because these aprons were designed to be flattering. For instance, the ruffle stopped right at my waist, so there was no bunching of extra fabric, and the wide tie makes your waist look slim, not shapeless. And the adorable cupcakes are a nice finishing touch to the whole thing.

This week, I’m giving away the Frosted Cupcake apron pictured above! To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment at the bottom of this post with your favorite frosting flavor – in honor of the frosted cupcakes on the apron. The winner will be chosen randomly on Thursday, January 28th at midnight. Don’t forget to leave your e-mail address when you comment so that I can contact you if you are the winner.

If you don’t win the giveaway, check out some of their other aprons as a gift for yourself or as a fantastic Valentine’s Day gift. Flirty Aprons makes mens and kids aprons, as well. I really like the Cherry Blossom Apron, too, and will be adding that to my own wish list!

There are many ways to make fudge that start out with some sugar and a candy thermometer, and while I’ve had plenty of excellent fudge made this way, I’ve also ruined more than a few batches by not watching the temperature closely enough. The idea of a worry-free fudge, therefore, appeals to me. And, fortunately, it is very easy to make a delicious batch of fudge with virtually no effort at all.

This fudge recipe starts with semisweet chocolate and sweetened condensed milk – and those two ingredients make up the bulk of the recipe, with just a little butter and a little vanilla to round things out. All the fudge ingredients are combined in a a double boiler and melted together. You can actually do this in a large saucepan instead of a double boiler, but you will need to stir constantly to prevent the chocolate from scorching (the pan will get quite hot where the burners make contact) as everything melts together.

To make the fudge more interesting, I turned it into a big batch of s’mores by stirring in marshmallows and chopped graham crackers. They help break up the intensity of the chocolate a bit, so you get a nice mixture of rich chocolate, chewy marshmallow and crisp crackers. It’s a great variation on a s’more. Mini marshmallows are already the “right” size for this recipe, but it is very easy to cut large marshmallows (or homemade ‘mallows) into quarters with a pair of scissors and stir them in instead.

Store these in an airtight container to keep the graham cracker bits nice and crisp. The fudge will taste best within the first few days it is made. I try to keep the pieces medium-sized, but you cut cut them down to bite-size squares to serve a crowd.

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