Yummy Valentine Fudge

For Valentine's Day, Pam found a recipe by searching in one of our several romantic cookbooks for recipes that would use ingredients we already had on hand. As the book sat open on the counter for a day or two, we each realized that it was a recipe we had enjoyed before -- Grape Snausages. It ended up being a little different this time,in a good way: I had purchased hot Italian chicken sausage without any particular plan, and it made for a nice hot-sweet main course.

For dessert, Pam (the brains of this operation, as careful readers will have noticed by now) suggested a recipe source that has served mainly as a decoration since we received it some while ago. Java Jolt is a cute little box of cards, each with a recipe or two involving coffee.

I looked through the entire box, and found just one that looked feasible for a holiday that was to fall on the busiest day of my week.

The card entitled Avalon Gold Rush begins with a story about real, old-school fudge like we still find here in New England. It then offers quite a simple recipe for a short-cut fudge.

I varied this only slightly. First, I knew that in my hands, the foil-lining method would just be a way to get shreds of foil into the fudge. So I used a silicon pie-pan liner that my mother had recently given us (and that Pam had remembered). Although we actually had Amaretto on hand, I decided to use cherry Schnapps (this was Valentine's Day, after all). We of course do not have instant coffee on hand, so I added about a half cup of coffee left over from the morning. (We usually do not have leftover coffee, but I had reserved some on purpose.)

The result was yummy, soft fudge that is so rich that we have enjoyed the tiniest of servings over the course of the rest of the week. My Valentine pronounced it extremely delicious.