Fabulous fudges

I found my “twist” for the maple fudge yesterday, at the Palo Alto farmer’s market, in the form of fresh young ginger (with the leaves still attached!).  I bought all that I could in hopes of being able to extract the flavor of the leaves – which is a wonderful, light ginger scent, without the harshness that ginger root frequently has.  While that experiment failed (not enough flavoring in the leaves), it left me with lots of delicate young ginger that was begging to go into something.  So I steeped some young ginger and a little bit of mature ginger in the cream for the maple fudge, and – aha! – got a wonderful maple ginger fudge (with walnuts).  At first “hit”, it tastes like gingerbread – brown sugar and ginger – but then the flavor of the maple syrup comes through.  It’s wonderful.

I also made the lavender-lemon-white chocolate fudge, the coconut tequila lime fudge, and the coconut almond fudge.  Here’s some food porn for your perusal:

On today’s agenda: chocolate cherry almond fudge, maybe some fruit gels, and kitchen cleanup.  If I can get the dining room table fully cleared, I’ll whip out the chocolate tempering machine and start doing chocolate-covered apricots and candied ginger.  That will put me ahead of schedule and allow me to prep caramels and toffees during the week, and maybe get to casting some chocolate molds, in advance of the great Thanksgiving extravaganza!