Category: Desserts

Hot Fudge Sauce

My mother loved to try new things she saw at the Co-op grocery or A & P, so it is very likely that I had my first taste of commercial hot fudge in 1948. That’s when Smucker’s introduced chocolate fudge as one of their spoonable ice cream toppings. She probably made hot fudge sauce before then, because I have loved the stuff for as long as I can remember..

After the Dairy Queen opened in Hayward, I became a regular customer for hot fudge sundaes and hot fudge malts. By the time I was in high school my friends and I would gather at the soda fountain on main street where I even tried hot fudge cokes.

If you think that sounds odd, you did not grow up in the golden age of the soda fountain where you could customize your phosphates and sodas. There were the standards of course–lemon or lime phosphates, lemon/lime phosphates, cherry phosphates and plain Coca Colas. But there were dozens of variations including chocolate cherry cokes, lime cokes and vanilla cokes.

And of course, there was the “Suicide” or “Slop” made with a squirt of just about every flavoring stirred together in a large malt glass. I think that they cost about fifteen cents and were not very good. All the sugar in them, however, made them ideal for dipping the end of your paper-covered straw in the glass and then blowing the paper up to the tin ceiling, If you were lucky, the paper would stick there to make more cleanup work for whatever friend was working at the fountain that day.

Having matured a little, and real soda fountains with tin ceilings almost impossible to find, I no longer try to stick soda straw paper on ceilings. However, I still enjoy eating hot fudge sundaes, especially ones with home made hot fudge sauce.

Many years ago I used a recipe from one of our cookbooks to make what turned out to be the best hot fudge sauce we had ever tasted. I promptly forgot which cookbook held the recipe, and my sporadic attempts to find it proved futile. Then one day I stumbled on it, complete with a “Very good!” note in Jerri’s handwriting.

The recipe is based on one by Jane Buhr from Our Church Picnic compiled by members of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in New Richmond, Wisconsin. Here is how to make it.

INGREDIENTS:

4 squares semisweet chocolate
3 heaping tsp. cocoa
1/2 cup butter
2 1/2 cups sugar
A pinch of salt
12 oz. can of evaporated milk
1 tsp. vanilla

PROCEDURE:

Melt the chocolate, butter and cocoa in a double boiler, stirring frequently to make a velvety liquid. Gradually add the sugar, salt and milk, stirring continuously until the sauce thickens. Stir in the vanilla. Serve warm over ice cream or other desserts.

NOTE. You can store this sauce for several weeks in the refrigerator and warm it when needed.

 

Custard Pie

Our chicken coop was home to at least a couple dozen hens and a rooster year round. Hens need plenty of daylight to lay reliably, so egg producers today have bright artificial lighting that makes the hens think it is midsummer on the winter solstice. We didn’t even have a back porch light or a light in the woodshed, let alone one in the chicken coop. If I didn’t fill the woodbox before it got dark, one of my sisters carried the flashlight while Dad complained about our wasting batteries.

We were lucky to get a half dozen eggs a day in January, which is one of the reasons why we had cereal or pancakes for breakfast so often in the winter. I still like how a bowl of hot oatmeal warms me on a cold morning, so the cereal may have been partly a way to prepare us kids for the walk to the bus stop in -30 degree weather.

During the late spring and throughout the summer, however, we had more than enough fresh eggs. That’s when Mom made custard pies. She could whip one up in 20 minutes, including the time it took her to make the crust. After you have made a dozen, you will be doing the same.

Not as sweet, not as many calories or carbohydrates as fruit pies, a custard pie is a delicious way to end a meal. A custard pie is absurdly easy to make. This recipe will make a nine inch pie that will serve eight.

INGREDIENTS:

1 pie crust
3 large eggs
2 cups whole milk or 2 cups reduced fat milk plus 1 tablespoon melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

PROCEDURE:

First make a pie crust. You can halve this recipe for one crust or make two and freeze the second. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. When the oven is hot, prick the bottom of the pie crust and put the crust in the oven. You have 10 minutes to make the filling.

Put the eggs in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes to bring them to room temperature. Have the milk at room temperature or warm it to about 100 degrees. Beat the eggs until the whites and yolks are mixed, but not lemon yellow.

Stir the milk, sugar, salt, nutmeg and vanilla into the eggs and mix well. After the crust has baked 10 minutes, remove it from the oven and fill it with the custard mixture.

Return the pie to the oven, turn the heat down to 325º. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes. After thirty minutes, test for doneness with a table knife stuck into the center of the pie. If the blade comes out clean, the pie is done. If not, bake four or five minutes longer and test again.

NOTE: If you have too much custard for your crust, you can bake it in custard cups along with the pie. Jerri puts the cups in a pan of hot water, but I usually just pop them into the oven.