Chocolate Fudge

I swear I’m not addicted… depending on your definition of addiction.

In the name of social justice I have given up all sorts of things at various times, bananas, meat, clothing from certain countries, but one thing I never gave up, couldn’t ever give up, was chocolate.

And now, that’s okay!

In the town of Matagalpa resides a chocolate factory, El Castillo, that not only produces the chocolate-iest chocolate that could ever melt in your mouth, but actually respects and tries to help local cocao farmers improve their lives.

I’ll leave them to explain more on their website, but for this site, we continue with our regularly scheduled fudge confab.

I began with what would probably be a great recipe – Nigella’s Fudge. One can of sweetened condensed milk…. 350 grams of chocolate (75% Volcano Mombacho Chocolate)… 30 grams butter… taste check… whoa!

For anyone who loves, as in luuuuuuvs, dark chocolate, it’s probably fine right there. No one in Nicaragua will touch the stuff, though. Their idea of chocolate is a Snickers bar. I knew if I was going to have any help eating this (which is absolutely necessary!), I had to make an adjustment.

So to keep the texture workable while sweetening it up a bit, I alternated between adding cups of powdered sugar and short pours of a donated can of Vanilla Ensure. For some reason, the fudge gods were not offended, and I ended up with gooey, chocolately fudge! Phew!

Now just to liquefy it enough for the needle…