Our test cook attempted to shape these chocolate fudge drops into hearts in honor of Valentine’s Day but they all seemed to come out rounded. Nevertheless, she made them with love.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
“I have a fudge recipe for you, girlfriend, that will amaze you!” the letter from Bonnie Chocallo read. “I am serious.”
Most of the mail that comes to the newsroom nowadays is actually email, so it was charming to receive a recipe in a hand-written, pen-and-ink letter from the Wyoming woman, who reminded me of a time I had written about the prize-winning cookies she baked for blood drives she’d organized, as well as events at her church.
Checking the archives, I saw that in a 2007 article Bonnie shared recipes and tips for Oreo Drops as well as chocolate chip cookies in which she had doubled the conventional amount of chocolate.
“I figured, who wouldn’t like more chocolate?” Bonnie told me at the time.
Still a chocolate fan, Bonnie explained she used to make “old-fashioned” fudge that won blue ribbons at the Luzerne County Fair and Northeast Fair. But now she uses a “2-ingredient fudge that put my old recipe into retirement.”
A few days after her letter arrived, I rounded up the two ingredients — a 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk and 12 ounces of chocolate chips — and blended them in a double boiler on the stovetop.
The recipe said you could “add walnuts, cranberries, whatever you want” so I did add about 1/3 cup of chopped walnuts and 1/3 cup of raisins, also chopped. Also, I added a teaspoon of vanilla. So altogether I had five ingredients.
What did the TL taste testers think?
“It’s rich and good for a chocolate craving,” reporter Jen Learn-Andes said, adding that she would have liked more nuts.
Across the newsroom, columnist Bill O’Boyle expressed an anti-nuts opinion. “I don’t like nuts in my chocolate,” he said. “I’m a ‘Milky Way’ guy, not a ‘Snickers’ guy.”
Of the fudge drop itself he said it was “very tasty” but also “very, very sweet,” he said. Having one made him “use up my sugar allotment for the week.”
Reporter Margaret Roarty said she would have liked more nuts to break up all that chocolate richness and sports reporter Kevin Carroll, who called the drops “very good” said he found them “a little bitter” but not enough to stop him from accepting a second one.
Maybe I should have used milk chocolate morsels instead of semi-sweet, I told him. Hmm.
Meanwhile, my husband and fellow test cook Mark made several of the drops disappear.
“They’re very good, once they set,” he said.
And news editor Roger DuPuis was happy with the fudge drops the way they were. “They were great,” he said with a laugh. “Or else I wouldn’t have eaten four.”
The recipe says you can pour the fudge into a pan or drop it by teaspoonfuls to make “fudge drops.” I chose the latter option, putting the drops on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Most of the drops appear to be rounded; actually I was trying to turn them into heart shapes for Valentine’s Day — and that didn’t quite work out. But rounded is always good, isn’t it?
Now for the recipe, courtesy of Bonnie Chocallo of Wyoming.
Chocolate Fudge
1 can (14-ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 bag (12-ounces) chocolate chip.
You can make this in a pot on the stove or in a glass bowl in a microwave. First, spray the pot or bowl with cooking spray. Then hear the two ingredients together until the chocolate chips melt; stir until smooth.
Pour mixture into a greased 8 x 8-inch pan and allow to set, at room temperature or in refrigerator if needed. If you prefer, you can drop the mix from founded teaspoonfuls to make fudge drops.
