DIY Club 1.0

V and I (W) got together for our first DIY club meeting on Saturday, 11 October. This idea was borne out of our need to see that the other was still alive and our desire to create something! We are currently living on opposite ends of Cape Town and with work demands and life happening, we have not seen each other face-to-face for a veeeeery loooooong time.

So what is DIY club? At the moment, our thinking is a once-a-month get together to catch up and learn something new. The host will decide on the project for that particular month. This project can be anything which catches the fancy of the host. And I really mean anything. During our gtalk discussions, some of the ideas generated included cake and cupcake decorating, any new recipes, henna tattoo design, new books for review, jewellery making, etc. You get the drift -ANYTHING.

To kick things off, I decided to keep it simple; hence we made ‘Simple Chocolate Fudge’. The original recipe is taken from Stephanie’s Joy of Baking website.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups nuts (used two small bags of Messaris mixed nuts)
414ml condensed milk (bought two tins, but only added contents of 1.5 tins Clover condensed milk)
400g chocolate (2 x 150g Cadbury Topdeck slabs and 1 x 100g Lindt Dark Chocolate slab)
30g unsalted butter (used Clover unsalted butter)
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract (used Moirs vanilla essence)

Clockwise from top left: Chocolate added to condensed milk;
Melting chocolate; Roasted nuts; FUDGE!
(Please excuse poor quality pics - #BlackberryFail) 

I’m not going to write out the method again because we literally followed Stephanie’s recipe to the t, so check out her site because she explains everything really well (she even has a video tutorial!). The only thing we didn't do was steam the nuts to remove skins because we had bought skinless nuts. *score*

Also, Stephanie states that the fudge should set at room temperature, but the fudge took forever to set because it was a particularly hot day (Shoutout to my Boo, Cape Town summer!). A suggestion from a baker friend was to allow the fudge to set further in the fridge, and that worked quite well.

The verdict? A simple recipe with simple ingredients and a simple method that yielded delicious fudge! I must admit the fudge is slightly too nutty for my taste probably because I am not a big fan of nuts. Next time I would add fewer nuts or even substitute them with marie/tennis biscuits. You know, to shake things up! It was quite a fun experience and one of the best moments was actually licking the bowl! Hehehehe…

W