Nutella Fudge

I found this beautiful recipe on the tastykitchen.com site, but as usual, true Lunch Lady style, I just have to "healthify" it.

As if it's possible to make fudge healthy.

But better ingredients help remove the guilt factor a little bit. Especially around the holidays.

I mean, really, if I'm going indulge, at least I'm going to be sure it's somewhat organic and not completely full of bad for you ingredients.

So, no one's invented organic Nutella.  Yet.

But, Trader Joe's has an Organic Sweetened Condensed Milk that I'm pretty stoked about.  The usual stuff in my local store is not even close to being real.  I've only used it to make Key Lime Pie, but it's so full of crud that I can't justify the groaning goodness of even a bite of the pie.

I didn't have 60% bittersweet chocolate chips but I did have a stack of chocolate bars from my generous sis in law. They are Trader Joe's 4 oz stack of chocolate bars from all over the world.  I chose the ones from Ghana and Papua New Guinea.

Give it a rough chop.

I sound so kitchenly domesticated, right?

Meanwhile, get creative because you'll need it to make yourself a double boiler.

A glass bowl is best. Place it in a pan with water, but under the level of the bottom of the bowl.  You don't want the bowl's bottom dragging in the water.  We want to steam the concoction, not boil it.

I made the mistake of grabbing a metal bowl and then realized it had a rubber bottom on it to minimize movement while stirring. So I had to scrape it all out into a glass bowl.

I'm a mess in the kitchen. Just ask my hubby.

I also used organic butter.

Once the mixture has melted into a nice gooey mix, using a oven glove, hold tightly onto your bowl while scraping the contents out into a parchment lined, sprayed 8x8 inch glass dish.

I say hold tightly because if you don't like me, you'll drop said bowl onto the nicely parchment lined sprayed glass 8x8 inch dish.  The nicely parchment lined sprayed glass 8x8 inch dish will then break into a million pieces all over the counter and onto the floor.  And then you will thank your heavenly stars that the nice parchment spared your goey mix.

Hence, no pictures of the goey mix on the nicely parchment lined sprayed glass 8x8 inch dish.  I didn't have another 8x8 dish. So, I used another dish that worked just as well.

The results are spectacular and totally worth the pain and suffering of having to vacuum and wipe and clean and...you get the picture.

It's happiness in a mouthful of really good fudge. And it tastes so good, like Nutella, because well, it has Nutella in it.

I put sea salt on a few and my boys voted them down very quickly so we ate ours without the salt.  I think I liked them better without too.

I made this for our New Year's Day Open House party.

We had leftovers because I didn't put them all out.  Sneaky right?

The boys snatched these right up.

RECIPE HERE.

And they think they got the last one today.
But I have a hidden stash in the fridge just for me.
(It's a good thing they don't bother to read my blog.)

Oh the joys of motherhood.
The Lunch Lady