Penuche Fudge Recipe

Recipes From Yesteryear

There are a number of ways to prove that the book is old. One recipe called for one 10 cent package of potato chips. Good luck trying to find anything like that today. A recipe for Banana Salad cautioned that you "do not mix until ready to use unless you have a refrigerator." Now we know we are going back a ways.

Need more proof. Several businesses took out ads in the booklet. Theis Sheet Metal, Bud's Place and Huss Grocery could be reached by phone and the ad included the number. For sheet metal you could Phone 35. The grocery store could be contacted using Phone 49, and you could call Bud by dialing 50! My guess is that you would have to go through an operator and yes I do recall the days of the party line.

The ingredients were not always recognizable and the directions were suspect, but it worked for those folks. Here's what I'm talking about. A recipe for a Six Layer Dinner listed the ingredients as a layer of raw potatoes, a layer of raw hamburger, a layer of raw carrots, a layer of raw rice, a few slices of onion and a can of tomatoes. Now for the instructions. Season and bake in a moderate oven. That's it folks - no temperature, no timetable. Just put it together and watch it bake.

In addition to the Banana Salad, the booklet listed a Secret Salad, a 24 Hour Salad and one for a Liver and Egg Salad. Check out the latter. 6 chicken livers or calf liver, 3 small onions, 4 hard cooked eggs and French Dressing No. 1. That's the ingredients, now let's look at the preparation. You should "bake or fry the liver, chop eggs and liver not too fine, chop onions very fine. Mix with French Dressing No. 1, using chicken or goose fat in place of olive oil. Serve cold on lettuce leaves. Sorry, I think I'll pass on this one.

Under cookies there were recipes for Brown Cookies (seems simple enough) and Washboard Cookies. These are cookies that you should press with the tines of a fork (lengthwise, of course) to resemble a washboard. You should store the cookies in an airtight container if you want them to be "chewey" the next day.

Perfect Penuche Fudge Recipe

What is it about a soft chunk of penuche fudge that captivates the taste buds? Sure, it’s sugary-sweet, and that means it will always be popular on some level; but there’s just something about a freshly-made penuche fudge recipe that makes me curl my toes and bite my lip.

I’m a huge fudge fan, so maybe it was destined to be love at first bite. I love my chocolate straight-up and unfettered by any sort of distracting cake or cookie – at Christmas, I’m always found camped out in front of the fudge plate, making short work of my grandma’s family recipe. After a particularly traumatic pumpkin fudge incident, I limited myself to chocolate fudge and didn’t pay much attention to anything but the richest, deepest, darkest varieties as they crosses my culinary path. Blonde fudge? Eh. Caramel fudge? Nah. Peanut butter fudge? Blah.

Penuche? What’s that?

Some of you might remember how I spent the first part of this year in rural Massachusetts, sequestered in Cape Cod during a time of year that can only be described as, “really &#*%*@% cold.” When you’re locked away in self-imposed solitude and the temperature dips down to below 0 degrees, you start reaching for anything within arm’s reach that’s even remotely construed as comforting. As luck would have it, there was single, solitary coffee shop open in a nearby town, where I’d spend as many waking hours as possible. Nevermind that I had to sit out on the highway in the frigid cold, a veritable Steph-sical, waiting for the Flex Bus to Orleans. I was on my way to the Hot Chocolate Sparrow .

Besides being a lovely little coffee house, the Chocolate Sparrow (locals drop the “hot” in the name, for brevity’s sake, I’m sure) was a full-service diabetic coma factory. Besides a small offering of soups and sandwiches, the place had a insanely diverse selection of sweets. Cookies, cakes, pastries, ice cream, waffles, you name it. And, they had an old-fashioned candy counter that would make Baby Jesus cry from cavity-induced agony.

It was here that I had my first taste of penuche. Having exhausted the sample tray of all traces of chocolate, I poked glumly at the caramel-colored cubes left behind. “I’m not cutting up anymore chocolate until either you or the penuche samples are gone,” the counter lady half joked. “Go on, live a little.” She chortled to herself behind her book, amused by a now long-running inside joke we shared about me ransacking the sample tray a few times a week.

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