First of all, it drives me crazy when a recipe site asks for an email address to access a recipe. It seems ridiculous considering how many fantastic food sites are out there, both amateur and professional, that don’t require this. Second, a rainbow with no orange? Come on, people. Not cool. Orange is like, one of the best colors. Third, they use liquid food coloring, which not only creates insipid colors but also messes with the texture of the chocolate, by virtue of being a liquid. (Small additional point of irritation- the recipe tells you exactly how many drops of each color to use. Oh. My. Godthatissoridiculous.) And finally, if I’m rainbowing it up, I really like to go for vivid colors, none of this Easter pastel crap. You’re eating what is essentially a colored sugar bomb – why restrain yourself to subdued colors? So this is my take on rainbow fudge.

I considered other color combinations, and really, you could make this however you like- in team colors, flag colors, favorite colors, holiday colors, or what have you. 6 colors makes a really tall fudge so you could certainly make fewer layers if you need fewer colors for your scheme. If you require very specific colors, you can get a wide variety of food colors from Wilton here.

Added bonus of making this recipe: even your dirty dishwasher looks beautiful afterwards.

As to the taste… it’s pretty sweet, and pretty white chocolate-y, but good nonetheless. I made it for my 9-year-old niece’s birthday, and she likes white chocolate and super sweet stuff, so I wasn’t too worried on either count. It’s almost like eating a big piece of candy corn. Since it’s so tall, it’s a good idea to cut small pieces so it doesn’t overwhelm. I think you could even make a half recipe for each layer, because mine was so tall I had to call it “fudgehenge.”

I wouldn’t call this recipe “easy” because it takes a fair amount of time and fiddling around, but it is definitely easy in terms of cooking skills. You make each fudge layer in the microwave, with only 4 ingredients, so it’s not a recipe that requires a lot of technical kitchen skills. If you can microwave, stir, possess a reasonable understanding of what a rainbow looks like, and have a loaf pan, you can make this.

Recipe: Rainbow Fudge

Makes a lot even though it looks like a little. White chocolate chips are easier to use, because you don’t have to chop them, but they don’t melt as smoothly as a bar so I don’t recommend using them. Don’t get any amount of water in the white chocolate mixture, because it can cause the chocolate to seize and harden into lumps. I say this because between colors you’ll need to wash your spatula out – so be sure to fully dry it off with a towel.

INGREDIENTS:

• 36 oz. chopped white chocolate
• 3 cups sweetened condensed milk (you’ll need to buy 3 of the 14 oz cans to get 3 cups)
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, divided
• gel or paste food coloring (like this or this)

METHOD:

• Line a loaf pan tightly with foil. Spray lightly with non-stick cooking spray.
• Get out 6 microwave-safe cereal bowls. Into each bowl, put 6 oz. white chocolate, 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk, and 1/4 tsp vanilla extract. Set aside.
• Put one bowl in the microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring well after each 30 seconds, until chocolate mixture is smooth and well combined with no lumps. (All microwaves are different but as a point of reference mine took about 90 seconds total.)
• Add red food coloring and stir very well so there are no white streaks, scraping the sides of the bowl and making sure you get all the way to the bottom. A rubber spatula works well for this.
• Pour into prepared loaf pan and bang the pan on the counter a few times to settle and even out the layer.
• Place into the freezer for 20-25 minutes, until hard to the touch.
• Repeat with remaining bowls, making orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Once the loaf pan and the layers have been in the freezer, the layer will almost immediately start to set, so you need to move quickly with spreading out the mixture and banging it on the counter so it’s not lopsided or lumpy.
• After the final layer, put it back in the freezer for 2 hours, then move it to the refrigerator to completely set for a couple more hours.
• When you’re ready to cut it, flip it onto a cutting board and remove the foil. Dip a sharp knife in hot water between cuts and wipe with a towel so the colors don’t smear together. It tastes better at room temperature and holds up pretty well for a few hours; otherwise, refrigerate it to keep.

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Of course, I could just make a different recipe for each member of the family, but that’s not always the most practical thing to do. So in this case I decided to adapt a recipe for pumpkin fudge from Brown Eyed Baker, and make 4 variations in the same pan. Each quadrant will appeal to a different family member, but I only have to make the fudge one time and dirty out one pan. It’s win win win win.

I am a big fan of pumpkin, cinnamon, and dark chocolate together, so I made half the recipe with white chocolate as it calls for, and half with dark chocolate. Then I carefully poured each type into one side of a 9×13 pan, then pressed nuts into half of each kind. This yields a quarter pan each (or about 12 small squares) of pumpkin fudge, pumpkin pecan fudge, chocolate pumpkin fudge, and chocolate hazelnut pumpkin fudge. Of course, you can use whatever kind of nuts you like. Heck, I probably should have found a little corner to throw some coconut on for my coco-crazy brother-in-law. Next time.

Now I just have to find another kind of fudge to make for the sister who can’t stand pumpkin!

Pumpkin Fudge, Four Ways in One Pan
makes one 9×13 pan, 48 small squares or 36 larger squares. You need a candy thermometer for this.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 12 Tblsp butter, cut in pieces
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 7 oz. marshmallow creme
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 cup dark chocolate chips
• handful each of pecan halves and chopped hazelnuts, toasted

METHOD:

• Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray or line with foil, allowing to hang over the edges for easy removal.
• Put white chocolate in a mixing bowl, and dark chocolate in a smaller bowl. Put both bowls next to the stove.
• Put both sugars, butter, evaporated milk, pumpkin, spices, and salt in a heavy saucepan and bring to a full boil. Cook until the mixture reaches about 235 degrees F, which will take about 10-15 minutes.
• When mixture reaches 235, turn off the heat. Quickly stir in marshmallow creme and vanilla.
• Carefully pour half the mixture into the bowl with the white chocolate and stir with a heat-proof spatula or whisk to melt the chocolate. Add the dark chocolate to the remaining mixture in the pot and stir to melt. (At this stage it’s nice if you have a helper, but if not, you can do one in each hand.)
• Pour lighter fudge into one side of prepared pan. Pour darker fudge into the other side. Smooth with a spatula. When cool enough to touch but still warm enough to manipulate, firmly press hazelnuts into half of chocolate side and pecans into half of white chocolate side.
• Let cool for 1 hour, then cover and refrigerate overnight before cutting and serving.

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This is what I picture Santa doing the day after Christmas… parking his sleigh somewhere tropical and hopping in the pool with a frosty beverage.

Seeing as he’s Kris Kringle and all, it makes perfect sense that he’d opt for a resort that features Twizzler tiles and a sour belt lawn chair.

We got pretty carried away with the setting! The bar is one of my favorite parts, actually. The Christmas lights, constructed by my detail-oriented sister Marghi, and the bar stool by MJ, are too too divine!

MJ also worked out a highly realistic beach-side firepit.

The lush tropical garden is another highlight! Amazing how sour straws can make grass, foliage, palm leaves, and so forth. Radha lovingly formed each blade of grass by hand. Marghi rocked the teeny tiny birds of paradise.

In my opinion, crushed jolly ranchers (or lifesavers) are the unsung heroes of many a good gingerbread extravaganza. They add body and texture to your garden. And sprinkles! Don’t forget them as a finishing touch.

The jolly ranchers, melted, also make the cabana’s candy windows. The cabana has a triscuit and banana chip roof. There were some structural issues pointed out by self-proclaimed “editing eye” Roberto that were helped out with some Pepperidge Farms pirouette cookies. He also crushed a lot of sand for us. You might be surprised to know that 7-year-old Mitra provided the perfect keystone piece to hold up the whole roof! Luckily Radha and Marghi were constructionist queens and got the whole thing standing up and solid.

Lots of happy little fishies in the candy sea. Wouldn’t you be happy in a candy sea?!?

Merry Christmas Santa! Hope you enjoy the tropics this year.

Here’s the breakdown of what’s what:

• Cabana windows: crushed jolly ranchers baked into the gingerbread
• Cabana curtains: rainbow sour belts
• Cabana roof: triscuits and banana chips
• Christmas lights: licorice wheel and jujubes
• Swimming pool: crushed jolly ranchers baked into the gingerbread
• Pool tile floor: twizzler pieces
• Pool steps: Kit Kats
• Palm trees: pirouette cookies and sour straws
• Lawn chair: Kit Kats and rainbow sour belts
• Bar: gingerbread, triscuits, banana chips, white chocolate covered pretzels, gummy coke bottles
• Bar stool: white chocolate covered pretzel with gummy peaches
• Fire pit: licorice wheels, gingerbread logs, jolly ranchers, sour straws, Hershey’s oreo bites
• Garden: sour straws, spearmint gummies, gummy frogs, Reese’s peanut butter cups, gummy peaches, Jelly Belly candy canes, Hershey’s oreo bites, crushed jolly ranchers
• Rock edging: yogurt-covered raisins and Hershey’s oreo bites
• Grass: sour straws
• Sand: crushed triscuits, gingerbread, and yellow sprinkles
• Sea: tic-tacs, Sno-Caps, Mounds bites, Mike & Ike’s tropical, Tootsie pop bites, crushed jolly ranchers, gummy clownfish, Swedish fish, green sprinkles

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This recipe is not exactly Thornton’s, but it’s the closest I’ve found so far. The secret is Lyle’s Golden Syrup, a British product that’s kind of like corn syrup. I found it at World Market, but if you can’t find it locally you can add it to your next Amazon order.

Last year I cut up sheets of parchment paper to individually wrap them, partly to be cute and partly to prevent them from sticking together. This year I purchased some green and pink foil candy wrappers at Sur La Table (the very same with which, in a past life, I wrapped countless pieces of homemade Italian nougat at Rose Pistola) which should be a less labor-intensive and bling-ier way to wrap them.

I’m going to try using the end cuts of the toffee as the caramels in the Million Dollar Caramel Apple Cake, which I plan to make for Christmas morning. I’ve learned my lesson about using a tried and true recipe for Christmas morning, after last year… when I made a bacon cinnamon coffee cake and the power went out so we had to cook it on the BBQ and it tasted like smoky pork buns and was burned on the outside and raw on the inside. I really hope I don’t have to bake the caramel cake on the BBQ this year, because I think those caramels would be mighty hard to clean off the grill.

Get the recipe for this toffee at Epicurious.

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You know what makes THAT better? Dipping aforementioned fig in caramel and THEN in chopped roasted cashews and a little bit of cinnamon.

Ditto for apples!

I could tell you how… but Fig & Kindle helpfully wrote out a tutorial with these gorgeous seckel pears. So why reinvent the wheel?

A couple of notes for success:

• This is an excellent dairy-free dessert.
• Make sure your fruit is top quality. Mushy fruit dipped in caramel is still mushy fruit!
• Make sure the fruit is clean and very dry. Caramel won’t stick to wet fruit.
• The caramel will harden much more quickly than you think, so work fast and have everything prepared and set out neatly before you get started.
• You can use foil or parchment instead of waxed paper if you wish- it won’t stick once the caramel hardens.
• The dipped fruit will start to weep a little after about 2 hours in a warm kitchen, so if at all possible, dip them no more than an hour or two before serving.
• Don’t put them in the fridge or they’ll get messy.
• Lastly, this might seem like a fun craft to do with kids, but seeing as the caramel is about a million degrees, I’m going to recommend against doing that unless they’re at least in the double digits!

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I find it funny that there are so many recipes for brittle that say things like “3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup nuts” and so forth. First of all, the water measurement is totally pointless, because to get sugar to caramelize into brittle, all the water has to boil off first. So let’s say you start with 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup water. That will make brittle after the water all boils off and the sugar can caramelize. Now let’s say you start with 1/4 cup of sugar and 19 cups of water. That will STILL make brittle, eventually, after several hours when all the water boils off. For you see, the sugar can’t caramelize until ALL THE WATER BOILS OFF. This is science!

The second thing is that you do not need a candy thermometer as many recipes call for. You know why? Because you have EYES. When the sugar makes its magical metamorphosis into brittledom it TURNS BROWN. If you use a thermometer to make brittle you are either a masochist or you can’t tell when something clear turns brown. If the second thing describes you then make it with a friend who can visually discriminate between different colors better than you, and problem solved.

So here is what you need for brittle. You need some sugar. How much, ish? Well I don’t know, how much brittle do you want? I usually throw around a cup in a heavy pot. But I certainly don’t measure it. Add some water. If you add 19 cups of water you will wait a very long time so just add a bit of water so the sugar is like really wet sand. It’s OK if it’s not really really wet or if it is really really wet because it is all going to go away. Turn on the flame on medium high and don’t stir it. Wait for science to occur. We will get back to that in a minute.

Meanwhile, once it’s over heat, you have a few other tasks to take care of. Don’t worry, because the magic of caramelization takes awhile–like 10 minutes or more. Start by getting out a piece of parchment paper and putting it on a flat pan. Set it aside. If the pan is wonky find a different pan because wonky will make brittle that’s thicker in parts and thinner in parts. Of course if that happens you should pretend you did that on purpose.

Now you need to dig around in your freezer and around your kitchen to figure out what you’re going to put in the brittle. Usually nuts are the first thought. But that’s probably because I have a lot of different kinds of nuts in my freezer. You can do citrus zest, candied fruit or candied ginger chopped up, coconut, and the like. It’s good to do a mixture. It almost never turns out poorly no matter what you put in it, unless you put fresh things in like raspberries or raw hamburger meat. So don’t put fresh things in. The hot sugar will make them gross. Also hamburger in brittle is gross. Why are you putting that in? You are not using common sense.

How much of these non-fresh mixed things should you put in? I’m going to go with “a handful.” Should you chop them? I don’t know, how big are they? How lazy are you? These are the questions you can ask yourself to make these decisions. Usually I chop larger nuts into smallish but not tiny pieces. But you can also just roll over them with a rolling pin or leave them big. Again, whatever you do, you must pretend that’s what you meant to do and not just something you did out of laziness.

OK! Now your sugar and water is bubbling away on the stove and you have a pile of chopped or non-chopped nuts and maybe something else. You need to check in on the sugar every once in awhile because when the water boils off and the temperature rises, the magic science will happen. The sugar will start to get a little yellow. At this point you should throw in your nuts and stir them with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula but only enough to mix them in and not more. You will want to stir it and mess with it more but you should not do any of those things. This is because of a different kind of science called crystallization. If you agitate the sugar too much it will start to form crystals, and then your brittle will be cloudy and your friends will shun your crappy unprofessional brittle and you will probably lose your job and have to become homeless. All because of SCIENCE. So you see, science can work for or against you. It can also ruin your life.

But I digress! You have carefully stirred in your accoutrements and the sugar is still darkening. Wait until it gets to be a pretty dark amber brown color. It will look darker in the pot than it actually is. Remember, you are not stirring it. You are perhaps swirling it a tad. That should be OK. Turn it off and carefully pour it onto the parchment. Grab the sides of the pan and move it all around to distribute the brittle. Wait until it gets hard. That will happen pretty fast. Break it into shards. Bask in the glory.

I need to mention that there is another kind of science that can work against you in this process which is called BURNING. Did you know the scientific term for “burning” is “burning”? I thought there would be a cooler, science-ier word for it but Google says no. Google also says that “science-ier” is not a word but I don’t care what they say. Anyway, caramelized sugar is really hot. How hot? I don’t know, because I already mentioned that I’m not using a thermometer, but I will say it is hella hot. It also sticks to you so it’s hard to get off your skin quickly and it latches on the continue burning you. So be careful.

That was a very long description for something that I said was easy to make. The how-to, in sum, for those who dislike incessant rambling:

• Prepare a piece of parchment on a flat pan.
• Put some sugar and a bit of water in a pot over medium high heat.
• When it turns brown turn off the heat and add nuts and other stuff.
• Pour it onto a parchment and move the pan to distribute it.
• Wait until it hardens and crack it up.
• Be careful the whole time because it’s hotter than you think.

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My favorites are, in no particular order:

• This highly sophisticated Salon.com article about the birthplace of peeps.
• PeepHaiku.com.
• A tutorial from Serious Eats on how to make “Peepshi” – sushi from Peeps and Rice Krispy bars.
• This amazing news article from San Diego in which the “investigative reporters” did things like shooting peeps with 9MM guns, crushing them with a crane, and the like- in an attempt to prove that they are indestructible. (Um… slow news day, perhaps?)
• The Peep Research site which explores the effects of smoking and alcohol on peeps, and performs scientific and medical experiments on them- well-documented and hilariously presented, including the example below.

So how do you feel about using peeps as a medium for your art? What’s your vote for best use of peeps?

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I know the icing isn’t perfect here- that’s the beauty of making something for a person who is only 5. Perfection is not what they’re after. They are after copious amounts of frosting and candy on a cake that’s shaped like something other than a cake, which makes them pretty easy to please. I think the biggest compliment came when, after admiring the cake for several minutes, my nephew turned to my Dad and with saucer eyes and his jaw hanging open, and said- “GRAMPA- do you realize this CAR is EATABLE?!?!?”

Eatable indeed! I made this somewhat nasty hot pink strawberry cake in a 9×13 pan and then cut a third of it off, lengthwise. Then I cut the long skinny piece I had in half perpendicular. Like this:

I flipped the 2 pieces 90 degrees and set them next to each other on top of the remaining large cake and stuck them on with frosting. They were kind of slope-y which actually made it look more like a car. I wanted really sturdy, fluffy frosting for this, so I used a fluffy meringue frosting (my mom made it so I’m not sure how- something about like this) and tinted it blue to attach the cake pieces and cover the whole thing in gobs and gobs of icing. I made a little bit of white royal icing for the windows, doors, and writing. Tic-tacs for lights and blinkers, oreos for wheels, sour belts for racing stripes and windshield wipers, some weird white tootsie rolls for the bumpers, and voila! A car that any 5-year-old would love.

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The gingerbread casbah came into being because every year, we throw a themed Christmas party for around 100 of our closest friends. Since we just took a honeymoon to the Middle East, we thought we could try out some new tricks at a Middle East-themed Christmas party. After all, that is where the whole Christmas thing started, right? An evite full of bad puns later (“we are Beiruting for you to come”, and so forth) we had our “Christmas at the Casbah” party ready to go, and all we needed was an impressive centerpiece.

This is not really a casbah, but a typical courtyard house. (Casbah sounds cooler though, so that’s more of a marketing-focused name for it.) On our honeymoon, we stayed in a beautiful hotel in Old City of Damascus called Beit Al Mamlouka, and I very loosely modeled the casbah on my recollections of how it looked. I say “very loosely” because their floors weren’t made of sour belts and jujubes, and their walls weren’t edible.

For the gingerbread, I used a recipe that C&H tweeted me- and it was great. Alas, I haven’t actually tasted it, but from a construction point of view it was tops – simple to make, very easy to roll out, not too sticky, sturdy, and kept its shape during baking. Also, it smells delicious, which adds a nice extra sensory dimension to the house. The royal icing that glues the whole thing together is just a stiff mixture of egg whites and powdered sugar with a pinch of cream of tartar, mixed with the paddle attachment of a Kitchen-Aid.

I did most of the shape-cutting freehand, but used a star cutters for the front windows. To make the windows, we rolled out the dough and put it on a silpat. Then we cut shapes out and arranged crushed jolly ranchers inside. When they baked, they became clear and solid. You have to let them cool while carefully loosening them from the silpat, as the candy stays soft and molten for about 30 minutes after coming out of the oven. Once they harden fully, they are structurally quite sound.

I thought that doing this alone would be both boring and incredibly frustrating and also not come out as well, so I assembled a crack team to help out. Rodney the pastry chef is always an excellent addition to this type of team, and did lots of the rolling, fine icing work, and construction assistance. Heather took care of cobblestones and windows, while MJ formed small furnishings including the excellent hookah.

I am a firm believer that everything on a true gingerbread house should be edible, and should be candy. Also, I can make like anything out of marzipan or fondant- ergo, marzipan and fondant are cheating. Sculpting something out of a tootsie roll is so much more impressive. So I refused to allow any non-edible, non-candy/gingerbread/icing objects adorn the house.

I bought electric flicker tea lights to illuminate it during the party, to make the windows shine. Merry Christmas everyone!

Here’s the breakdown of what’s what:

• Windows: crushed jolly ranchers baked into the gingerbread
• Tile floor: rainbow sour belts, jujubes, licorice wheels, and silver dragees
• Balcony floors: red hots, tic tacs, and silver dragees
• Balcony railings: sesame candies, licorice wheels (unrolled), jujubes
• Cobblestones: formed tootsie roll slices with yellow sprinkles
• Hanging lamps: licorice wheels and Haribo raspberry gummies
• Hookah: deconstructed tootsie rolls, sour belts, and licorice wheels
• Table: gingerbread star with dragees and jujubes
• Chair: sesame candies and tootsie rolls
• Tree: iced cookie with Haribo raspberry gummy and tootsie roll
• Camels: iced cookies with sprinkles

I wasn’t able to find any other instances of Middle Eastern gingerbread architecture on the web, but I did come across some gingerbread structures of note. Here are a few of my favorites from around teh interwebz.

• Max’s cave from Where The Wild Things Are, from A Table for Two <<<btw, AMAZING!!!>>>
• Gingerbread Houseboat from Houseboat Eats
• Gingerbread Woodcutters Cabin from Sweetopia
• Not gingerbread, bacon and licorice house from Almost Bourdain
• Cool 2 story house by Brown Sugar Bee

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Oh wait. Picture a kid trying to get the candy out. Um… creepy and perverse. Not helpful that it’s called “spliquid.”

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