Recipe: Double-Chocolate Walnut & Marshmallow Creme Fudge

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

I brought along some fudge to Ru’s party on Saturday and I thought I’d post it here in case anyone would like the recipe. I had in mind that I could bake a dessert and something with nuts & chocolate sounded good. So, I decided on fudge and headed to AllRecipes for an appropriate recipe.

I searched for “fudge” and found my way to their fudge section. From there, I navigated to the Fudge with Nuts recipes and on to the recipes for Chocolate Fudge [with Nuts]. There were about a dozen recipes there and I concetrated on those recipes which already had many reviews (recipes that are highly rated tend to garner more reviews, which leads to more reviews and so on).

I settled on Aunt Teen’s Creamy Chocolate Fudge. It had 343 reviews and still had an average 5-star rating. What I also liked about it — in addition to its inclusion of two types of chocolate along with marshmallow creme — was that it required no fancy candy thermometers (as some fudge recipes do). Here’s the recipe:

Aunt Teen’s Creamy Chocolate Fudge

Ingredients:

  • 1 (7 ounce) jar marshmallow creme
  • 1 ½ cups white sugar [see notes below on alterations]
  • ⅔ cup evaporated milk [a 5 oz can]
  • ¼ cup butter
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips [one full 12 oz bag]
  • 1 cup milk chocolate chips [half a 12 oz bag]
  • ½ cup chopped nuts [walnuts work very well here, though pecans would probably also be good]
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the nuts in an even layer. Toast them for 4 minutes, rotate pan, and continue to toast until fragrant and color deepens slightly, about 4 minutes longer. Then set them aside to slightly cool until they’re needed.

  2. Line an 8×8 inch pan with aluminum foil. Set aside.

  3. In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine half the jar of marshmallow creme, sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt. Bring to a full boil, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and pour in semisweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in nuts and vanilla; lightly fold in remaining marshmallow creme. Pour into prepared pan. Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours or until firm.

Recipe notes and alterations:

Though the recipe calls for 1 ½ cups of sugar, some of the reviews suggested trying just 1 cup of sugar instead. Since I didn’t want an overly-sweet fudge, I went with that suggestion (which worked out well). On a later batch, I tried using just ⅔ cup of sugar and that seemed to further improved the chocolatiness-to-sweetness ratio.

At one point, I also thought about using Splenda in lieu of sugar altogether. But I decided not to take a chance on that as fudge recipes tend to rely on the crystalline nature of sugar for the proper chemical reactions (unlike many other baked goods which only use sugar for its sweetening properties).

Automated Layout Testing in Mozilla

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Robert O’Callahan came up with a handy idea for Mozilla QC — automated layout regression testing. Based on an idea implemented by Ian “Hixie” Hickson for Opera, this would automatically test the daily Mozilla builds for new layout bugs.

At first, I couldn’t figure out how such a task could be automated. After reading over the planned outline, I realized that it was a rather elegant approach. In short, the script (Perl, in this case) would keep a set of known-good screenshots of various layout tests. Then, on each day, the script would the build through the series of tests, taking screenshots along the way. At that point, it would just be a matter of doing file comparisons between the known-good screenshots and those from that day.

The code isn’t yet complete, but it’s moving forward. The trickly parts are in dealing with unruly builds (as you may have guessed). For instance, if that day’s build crashes on one of the tests, then the script would need to detect that, kill the process and then restart Mozilla for the next test sequence. In all, I have a good feeling about this development.

A Better Shoelace Knot?

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

Reading over the ensuing comments on a shoe-fastening poll on Slashdot, the discussion turned to knot-tying techniques. Quitcherbitchen put it this way:

When you tie your laces, just do one extra loop around and then pull the second loop through. In other words, “the rabbit goes around the tree twice, then through the hole.”

Your laces will stayed tied all day, even throughout a run, but still come undone with a simple pull. Try it. […]

He then chimed in with an URL for an illustrated example where they call it The Better Bow. I read over it and tried to make sense of it in my head, but I’m not always so good at virualizations such as this.

I even tried untying one of my shoes and following along that way, but I got lost at the “Wrap the loop around your finger” bit. If you figure this out, please fill me in — perhaps demonstrating it to me on a shoe sometime IRL would clear things up.

Atkins Makes Its Own Food Pyramid

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

The Atkins folks have long spoken against the USDA Food Pyramid — I’m not a particular fan of it either and, indeed, the government plans on revising it by early next year. However, the Atkins group decided not to wait that long and they released their own food pyramid.

As you might expect, this pyramid has protein sources on the bottom tier (“eat more”) and grains at the top tier (“eat fewer”) — almost the opposite of the USDA version. Interestingly, even though a geometric food summary such as this may seem to oversimplify an eating plan, this one actually clarifies many aspects.

For one thing, many people think of Atkins as all “meat and cheese”. But, a quick look over their pyramid would show that’s not really the case — cheese is on the second-to-the-top tier, only just below grains. Many people also overlook the diet’s vegetable component. Veggies such as broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus (all of which are considered healthy on just about any diet) are on the second tier, just after protein sources.

I was also impressed that one of their footnotes emphasizes that hydrogenated oils should be avoided. Otherwise known as trans fats, they’re a rather bad type of fat as they not only raise your bad cholesterol but also lower your good cholesterol (even saturated fat doesn’t effect good cholesterol).

I don’t follow Atkins; rather, I go with The Zone which has a 40/30/30 ratio between carbs, protein & fats. All the same, Atkins seems a little more reasonable each time I learn more about it.

A Fish Called Wanda

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

John Cleese has been one of my favorite actors for some time now. He’s probably most famous for Monty Python and that’s where I first saw him. All the same, I think I most enjoyed him in Fawlty Towers (a sitcom from the mid 70s).

As I was perusing IMDB one day, I ran into A Fish Called Wanda. As it turns out, not only did John Cleese star in the film but he also wrote and directed it as well. I couldn’t lose! So, I had Mike add it to our Netflix queue and it arrived shortly thereafter.

I ended up watching the film last night. “Wanda” was made in 1988 and I thought of that as a good signn — ’88 seemed like a good year for Cleese. But, the film just wasn’t as funny as I had hoped. Sure, I had read the front-page comments (“Excellent caper comedy with a perfect cast”) but I should have read the “other user comments as well”.

I’m sure that most people find the film really good, but I just didn’t somehow. And, I found myself sharing many of the sentiments from the second-page reviews:

  • “Kevin Kline is almost unbearably irritating, and his character makes no sense (is he really a CIA killer, and if so, would he really be such a dumbo?); Jamie Lee Curtis simply isn’t as sexy or seductive as the film-makers want us to think she is, Michael Palin is wasted in a throwaway one-joke role and Cleese never gets much of a chance to do anything beyond looking bashful and doing his stock-in-trade ‘testy posh bloke’ schtick. […] ”

  • “Also Kevin Kline is too good as sadistic maniac Otto. If this was a Monty Python movie, Otto would be such an outragiously exaggerated character, that it would be at least a little bit funny. But Kline acts so naturally that you just hate the guy throughout the movie. […] ”

Those reviews pinpoint how I feel — Kline’s character was too mean to be funny, Palin’s stuttering isn’t even funny the first time, and Cleese’s character is more bumbling than humorous. Then again, maybe it’s just me. All the same, I don’t feel too bad for giving it a chance — with Netflix, it costs the same no matter how many movies we rent each month.