Hi Everyone! I am Dyann and welcome to today's episode of Dyann Bakes. Thanks for all your suggestions and comments on the webpage, dyannbakes.com. Today we are going to make chocolate fudge. And if you put some pretty fudge in a box with the ribbon, makes a great gift.

You'll see here, I have everything that I need for the recipe and there are three stages with this recipe that we need to be aware of. First is the sugar, we have to cook the sugar on the stove along with some half and half and some corn syrup. Then we have to put some air into that mixture after we add the chocolate and then it has to sit and mature for about two hours or so.

So that being said let's get started. Here I have my pot and my granulated sugar and the half and half. Adding the granulated sugar to the pot, give it a quick stir just to make sure there are no big lumps and this is five ounces of half and half. This will all be on the website. We now -- I am hoping that you have noticed. We have changed the website to include full recipes and they are in a PDF format as well if you would like to print them out. So just stirring the sugar together with the half and half so it sort of looks like thick, wet sand and here is the corn syrup.

This now I will put on the stove for about 5-10 minutes. And what's the key is that the sugar needs to dissolve. If you remember from our podcast on Swiss Meringue Buttercream, the way that we can determine that whether or not that's taken place is by rubbing it between the fingers. If on your fingertips, you feel it, there are still granules of sugar then it needs to cook a little bit more. Don't want this to come to boil. It's going to cook at a very very low temperature, but again it does need, it does need to be completely dissolved.

So I leave this to dissolve and cook and we will see in 5 minutes. The sugar is completely dissolved but I am going to test it one last time be a 100% sure. Yup, not gritty at all. And to this, now I am going to add the chopped chocolate. It's best if you add the chocolate, let it sit for a moment or two, let the heat that's frpm the cream mixture absorb into the chocolate and to stir it with a spoon. Don't use a whisk it adds a little too much of air, better just to use a spoon.

Let that sit for a moment and also here I have some salt. As soon as this is dissolve then I am going to add the salt. So now the next stage is that this mixture needs to get cooked on the stove to something that's called soft ball candy stage and what that means is that this sugar syrup -- If I were to drop it into a container holding cold water, it would form a soft ball of sugar. You could actually smush it and it would feel a - it could smush into like a pancake.

There is also a hard ball stage, logically that would mean that it would stay hard and crunchy. This again is going to be soft ball stage and that's between 235 degrees and 240. This is a candy thermometer. For something like this I am sorry to say you can't just winging, you are going to have to use a real candy thermometer. They are terrific because they has a hook on the back and you could hook it right into the pot and you leave it alone.

This is going to take about 20-25 minutes. So it's important that the thermometer is there and you can walk away from the stove. Okay, so see, here we have our mixture. Now I am going to stir it, so this chocolate gets nice and smooth and incorporated. Okay, so this is nice and smooth and now I am going to add this, just a pinch of salt. Salt is an enhancer, so what that will do is help make the chocolate taste more chocolaty. There is such a word.

Okay, I am going to put this back on the stove, and not to make a big old mess. First I am going to hook my candy thermometer on. And it's important that the actual thermometer part of the thermometer is not hitting the bottom of the pan which is another reason why it's good to have this clip. But you see that there is the mercury portion, I guess you have call it, that is in the pot and is hitting the liquid to make sure that you are reading the temperature of the chocolate.

So back on the stove it goes. What we are looking to achieve is a uniform boil across the top of the mixture and again it has to reach a temperature between 235 and 240 degrees, soft ball stage. See you in about 20 minutes. Okay, this has reached 235-237 degrees and up the stove it comes. With candy thermometers do yourself a favor and just take it and put it in the sink.

Now I have taken my marble slab and distributed some water, some cool water on top and now I am going to pour the fudge mixture on to the slab, stay as close as you can to the marble and stay in the center. I promise you it won't go all the way to the edges, I know that what you are thinking, but it's not the case. So there you go. Now if - take a peek, in here there is a whole bunch of left over fudge and things in the bottom of the pan, just leave it. It's okay.

Back on the stove away from me. Okay. Now you could see there is a little bit of water and that's okay. On top of this, I have done ounce worth of soften butter, we are going to just dot the top of the fudge with it and this then has to cool to about a 110 degrees that sounds very formal, but all it is that it has to not be hot to your touch. So that should take about a minute or two. I am going to let this melt and then using my bench scraper, I am going to incorporate the butter and add some air to it to cool it down completely. Sprinkle a little vanilla on top and then put it in 8 x 8 square pan that I have lined with aluminum foil and have also buttered.

You can see I have it so that there is flaps of foil hanging over the side. That's so when you pour the fudge in and when it after it sits for couple of hours you literally can just lift it right out of the pan, really makes it a lot easier. So I am going to let this melt and I will back in just a minute or two.

So now the butter is melted and this is the fun part, you get it aerated. It looks a little sticky at first but it does eventually all work in. Now we have just a little bit of a vanilla extract, add that in, hmm can smell it. The heat from the fudge is making the vanilla extract smell really nice. So now it's time to stick more and that's also another sign that it's ready to go.

So again we have our prepared pan, this time I will need to use my fingers just a little. Little messy but it's okay. It's actually kind of fun. Scrape it off as best you can. Okay. Now good idea to tap the bottom of the pan because then the air bubble rise to the top. And you can get rid of those. Push it around and to the edges. So now this is the final stage of our fudge. Now you just need to let it sit for about an hour or two, before you can cut it off and enjoy with your family and friends.

Here is our chocolate fudge. It really came out nice and I think you are going to enjoy it tremendously. It's so fun to make and you see it was really easy. Thank you for watching, I really appreciate it and I look forward to see you next time. Bye bye.