Fudge Offload: Silicone Vs. Aluminum Pans

In December, I spotted a post about fudge in The Blog Promoter LinkedIn group called Mama's Fudge Recipe, by Emily Powell. Fudge! Had to visit the site, as I myself make EZ minimal-ingredients fudge, such as "A Convenient Fudge" and "4-ingredient Raspberry Chocolate Fudge". Minimal ingredients are meltable candy, marshmallows, and frosting.

Emily's recipe contrasted with my recipes for list of ingredients and process. One of her pan preparation instructions that caught my eye was her use of Pam and flour, typically for a dessert to be baked. I asked her about it. She confirmed that the flour was raw. I am adverse to eating or serving raw flour, and wondered about dusting with powdered sugar instead of flour.for something that didn't need baking.

For my latest batch of EZ fudge, I tried spray oil and powdered sugar for two kinds of pans—a silicon rubber pan (24 square cavities) and aluminum pan (12 round cavities). Each square holds 5 teaspoons of filling; Each round (cup shape) holds 4 teaspoons. Natch, if you use these pans for cakes or muffins, pour only about a rounded tablespoon of batter to allow for expansion during the baking process. Some baking pans info:

• 24 (square) cavities silicone pan
• 12 (round) cavities aluminum pan (stamped single-piece)
• 24 (round) cavities aluminum pan (constructed w/cups attached to pan)

The pixstrip shows ingredients and pans, fudge mixture squeegeed into pans, ejected fudge pieces, and fudge pieces in paper liners in a box.

After I poured the fudge mixture into the prepared pans and cooling it in the refrigerator, I didn't get around to ejecting them until about four hours later. (Cooling time should have been about an hour or so.) The 3rd-panel pixstrip shows easy-out results with using the silicone pan, not so much with the aluminum pan. The plateful also shows nice shapes from the squares, but lots of misshapes and broken pieces from the rounds. Extraction from the silicone pan was not bad. I turned the pan upside down and pressed from the back. As for the aluminum pan, using the butter knife blade sometimes popped the shapes out ok, but most, not.

In the past, I've poured the fudge mixture into a spray-oiled 8 x 8 glass pan. After a couple of hours, I'd used a paring knife to cut it into 64 pieces. That task took some patience, as the mixture became dense. I'm not great at cutting consistent cubes, either.

I've concluded that using silicone pans for fudge—after prepping with spray oil and powdered sugar—provides good results. BTW, the fudge batch makes about 1 1/2 silicon pans worth (36 squares). The shapes fit very nicely into mini-cupcake paper liners for neatness, as the pixstrip shows in the last pixstrip panel.

Because the fudge squares fit so well in mini-cupcake papers, a future experiment will be baking mini-cupcakes in silicon pans that I prep with only spray oil instead of lining with papers, then seeing how well they fit each other after baking. I might need to underfill the squares with batter so the baked shapes don't bulge and fit the papers badly. (Typical mini-cupcake recipe calls for a rounded teaspoonful of batter.)

Related articles:

• Waits N Measures, Baking Pans N Papers (#87)
• Square Mini and Whoopie Muffin Experiment (#88)
• Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes (#70)
• Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Mini-muffins (#79)

Chocolate Cereal Blocks Etc

The classic Rice Krispies cereal treat has been around for decades. Over time, I’ve noticed these cereal yummies have undergone two noticeable changes:

• Microwave directions for melting butter and marshmallows, replacing the kettle method
• Proliferation of pre-made packages

Chocolate Cereal Blocks Etc is my frequent deviation from the classic cereal treat, which I most recently prepared for a picnic. Received several raves, so I said I’d send out the recipe. Wellll, in the midst of writing it up, it started shaping up to be another blog article recipe. This recipe uses (in order) butter, caramel vanilla marshmallows and chocolate rice cereal for the cereal blocks. The ganachy icing has peanut butter meltable candies and chocolate frosting. For more details and ideas about the icing, read A Convenient Ganachey Icing.

The classic Rice Krispie blocks recipe uses 10 ounces of marshmallows, which throws a monkey wrench into cereal bar recipes if using Kraft novelty flavor marshmallows. (Curses! Kraft used to put out the novelty flavors in 10-ounce packages, but they’ve gotten greedy and now put them out as 8-ouncers!)

For convenience of those who want to make the classic blocks, I’ve pasted the very simple cooks.com recipe (printer-friendly). Deviation info follows.

CRISPY TREATS (MICROWAVE)
Printed from COOKS.COM
________________________________________
1/4 c. butter
4 c. miniature marshmallows
6 c. Rice Krispies cereal

Substitute 40 large marshmallows.

Butter microwave bowl big enough to hold all ingredients; microwave marshmallows 2 minutes then stir. Microwave again 1 minute. Stir in and mix well the Rice Krispies. Butter hands and put this mixture in a cake pan, flatten, cool and cut into squares.

My deviations from the cooks.com recipe:

• Primary ingredients:
• 3 tablespoons butter instead of ¼ cup (4 tablespoons)
• 10 oz. bag of Kraft caramel/vanilla marshmallows
• 8 cups Cocoa Pebbles. Key concept is chocolate rice cereal.
• Pan: I lined the pan with wax paper that overlapped two opposite sides. I used spray oil on hands instead of butter.
• Icing: I microwave-melted 4 ounces of Wilton Peanut Butter meltable candies (available at craft stores), stirred in 4 ounces of spreadable frosting, and microwaved some more, but using lower power. I poured the warm icing over the cereal mixture and squeegeed (using old but clean tool) it into the crevices.
• Yield: The cooks.com recipe says to cut the batch into 24 pieces. I cut my batch into 48, although some came out a bit smaller than others. Your sizes might vary also, depending on how well you wield your knife. :-)