But, New York only got about half a foot.

Boston, my former home away from home, though got hammered and all Saturday I read tweets about restaurant closings and day drinking during the snow day. Lots of snow angels in the streets and snowmen in the Boston Common, with everyone marveling at the amount of snow!

I ended up spending Friday night and Saturday at home watching TV/movies (Django Unchained, Anna Karenina), reading (Dark Places), and listening to music (my current favorite Macklemore). (I did go outside to go to the grocery store though). And as I get antsy when I don’t cook, I ended up making cake batter fudge, indulging my spontaneous whim after finding this recipe online.

I should mention that as much as I need a little downtime each day I am horrible at relaxing and staying at home all day gets me stressed!  Hence why I make fudge in the middle of winter for myself.

Thankfully, Sunday was a bit more active as I went home to DC (where I am currently writing this post). A short work trip and its back to the melting slushy city of NYC.

What you’ll need…

• 2 cups yellow cake mix
• 2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, cut into small squares
• 1/2 cup milk
• sprinkles

Combine cake mix and sugar in a microwave-safe bowl. Add butter and milk. DON’T STIR YET! Microwave for 2 minutes. Stir immediately until completely combined. Add sprinkles. Don’t overmix because the sprinkle color may bleed. Spread into a greased pan. Refrigerate for at least an hour and enjoy!!

Someone became a centenarian today. She did so gracefully (I hope) and with an open heart.

With today being my 100th post, a celebration was most certainly in order. Guided by some sweet-craving taste buds and eyes that tend to seek pretty things, I set my heart on Cake Batter Fudge. When I bake, I typically peruse the internet to get an idea of ratios within the recipe since everything is so precise in the baking world. However, a long perusing session moved me to the conclusion that most cake batter fudge recipes incorporate overly processed cake mixes that are full of chemicals, dyes, and all sorts of ingredients that I cannot pronounce. If I wanted to do this right, I knew I had to move outside of my baking comfort zone and recipe-brainstorm this one up from a blank canvas…

And I did. All week. Seriously, I tossed around possibilities for ingredients all week long and finally settled on the base for this fudge being raw cashew butter. From there, I built in the other ingredients and toyed with ratios until this little vegan miracle came to be.

The result is a super fudgy, creamy, and cake-battery delight to the senses. The addition of butter extract and raw cashew butter transforms the fudge from something that could be mistaken for vanilla into an undeniable force of cake-batter pow. Best part? No one will know this is vegan by taste. So much so that it should probably be called {Secretly Vegan} Cake Batter Fudge.

Stacks of gooey cake batter bundles of joy…

{Secretly Vegan} Cake Batter Fudge (Makes 40 Pieces)

◊ 1 cup raw cashew butter (see recipe below — must be raw or it will alter the flavor of the fudge)

◊ 1/2 cup vegan buttery spread (e.g., Earth Balance)

◊ pinch of salt

◊ 1 teaspoon butter extract

◊ 3 to 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

◊ 4 tablespoons sprinkles, divided

1. Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan over medium-low heat. Add in cashew butter and stir (note: this will not incorporate with the butter until you begin adding in the powdered sugar). Turn off the heat, and add in pinch of salt and the butter extract. Slowly begin adding in the powdered sugar, stirring constrantly to ensure all sugar lumps are smoothed out. Once the powdered sugar is added and the mixture has cooled to room temperature or slightly warm, add in 2 tablespoons of the sprinkles and give the batter a few stirs. If you add in the sprinkles when the batter is too warm, the color is more likely to bleed.

2. Pour the mixture into a lightly greased 5 x 8 or 8 x 8 baking pan (depending on desired thickness). Top with remaining 2 tablespoons of sprinkles. Pop in the fridge for at least one hour or until fudge sets. Cut into 40 or more pieces. Indulge. Store uneaten fudge in fridge or freezer.

Raw Cashew Butter (yields 1 cup)

◊ 2 cups raw cashews

◊ 1/3 cup water

◊ pinch of sea salt

◊ 1/2 teaspoon agave nectar

Add the cashews to a food processor and process until a coarse meal is formed. Slowly add in water (using less or more, as needed) as processor is running and process until a creamy butter has formed. Add in salt and agave nectar and pulse.

So, here’s what I did:

2 cups Funfetti Cake Mix (that’s what I had left after making the Cake Batter Rice Krispie Treats)

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

1 stick of butter cut into small squares

1/2 cup of milk, you may want to start with a little less and check the thickness

Stir the Cake mix and sugar in a microwaveable bowl. Add the butter and milk without stirring. Microwave about 2 minutes, then stir. Place in an 8×8 inch pan and refrigerate a least an hour- probably better to do at least two hours.

ingredients

You know how sometimes you get home and you’re tired and feel like crap and head straight to the cupboard for one of those pre-cooked meals in a packet that you just need to add water to or heat up in the microwave? And then you eat them watching some equally cheap show on TV and feel sorry for yourself and resolve to not be so lazy from then on, except the next day comes around and work is stressful so you go home and do the same thing all over again except this time with more tears and maybe you forgot to turn the dishwasher on and doing dishes by hand is too much work so you reach for the old paper plates from that last barbecue from years ago before all your friends had babies and stopped having time for barbecues?

Okay, me neither. That was a slight exaggeration. But the point is that sometimes I’m tired. Really tired. And lazy. But mostly tired. And I want some dessert. But I also don’t want to move too many muscles.

Enter the perfect fudge recipe for the tired full time worker and runner in need of a sugar fix.

You need: one microwaveable bowl, cake mix (I used vanilla but I suppose any cake mix will do), icing sugar, butter and milk (and sprinkles, if you’re feeling festive). THAT’S IT! The instructions are here, complete with photos and everything. Follow those steps and eat until your stomach cries of happiness. Seriously, this paragraph alone took longer to write than it takes to make this fudge.

When it comes to stuff like cake mix, I’m a pretty vocal supporter of the making it from scratch movement. It’s therapeutic, easy, and extra delicious. I don’t think I’d ever bought a packet of the thing before until I came across this recipe and decided that the future of humanity depended on me figuring out whether this was as amazing as it sounded. Plus, if I make cake batter from scratch and I don’t put it in the oven, there’s something to do with its magnetic field and laws of gravity somethingsomething that just makes it go straight into my belly. Because screw you, salmonella).  So now I’m a convert. I might just have to have a packet of cake mix at home at all times, just in case I need to make good use of 3 minutes and get me some more of this fudge.

My instagram version of the process.

Alright, so here are the supplies I used:

• Measuring cup
• Can Opener
• Teaspoon
• Large Mixing Bowl
• Fork
• Spatula
• Microwave
• Tin Foil
• Pan (I used a glass 8×8 square)

So, last night I decided to attempt a recipe I found on Pinterest: Funfetti Fudge! I’m not the best in the kitchen, (oh my cake ball adventure was disastrous and basically a three-day process, but eventually yielded tasty results!) I thought to myself, hey there are only a few ingredients this can’t be that difficult right? Plus, one of the girl friends I’m meeting up with this weekend had a birthday a few weeks ago, so it’s a belated celebratory dessert since we couldn’t spend the day together. Oh dear though, why doesn’t anyone remind me that I always have such difficulty with white chocolate? I can never get it to melt. Victoria’s bowl of chips and condensed milk looks so smooth and creamy, and mine? It looked kind of lumpy…After consulting my housemate on her opinion of my bowl of chips and their accuracy of stirring I decided I should just take the plunge and forge on with the last few steps (it’s a short recipe mind you.) Anyway, here are some photographs documenting my latest kitchen escapade. I always enjoy food that involves sprinkles, so pretty. I(Also, I shared what was left of my mint brownies from Tuesday at work and with my housemate and dad, and everyone enjoyed them so this can’t be that bad.) I always feel a bit accomplished when I actually attempt to create something I’ve pinned, so I’ll take this as a personal check off the list! The girls seemed to approve of them this weekend, and we couldn’t stay away so I’d say this was a success!

As for the real making it process, pour the condensed milk and the chips in a big mixing bowl, and put it in the microwave. The recipe said for 2-3 minutes, but I definitely did it for closer to 7 in actuality, maybe even longer because mine just wasn’t melting. After you remove the bowl from the microwave, stir it up quickly while it’s still hot. Once you’re satisfied with the amount of blending (as smooth as possible,) go ahead and put in the 3 teaspoons of Vanilla. I substituted Baker’s Imitation Vanilla for Pure Vanilla Extract (it’s cheaper, and I already had some in the cabinet.) The Pinterest recipe calls for almond extract as well, but I didn’t pick it up at the store, and heeding my mother’s advice I just omitted it. I can’t imagine that this made a huge difference taste wise. Also, I was really nervous about folding the sprinkles in because I didn’t want them to turn the mix an ugly color, but luckily this didn’t happen. I just generously tossed in handfuls of sprinkles until I was satisfied with the distribution of color throughout the mixture, and folded them in with the spatula. Next I poured the mix in the glass pan I lined with tin foil until it was evenly spread throughout the pan. Then I just let it sit on the counter for a few hours before I went to bed, and let it chill in the refrigerator over night. The next morning I removed it and let it sit out on the counter for a few minutes to soften up, then cut it in cubes with a knife. I put the cubes in little baggies and tied them to bring them to the girls (see below.)

The final product.

Everybody knows that the best part of the cake-making process is licking the beaters. And the spatula. And any batter than may have dropped down the side of the mixing bowl.

The batter. The best part of the cake-making process is the batter.

I’ve been seeing a lot of cake batter-flavored recipes lately. Cake batter pancakes. Cake batter truffles. Cake batter bars. Cake batter pie.

The choices seem kind of exhausting when you could just make some cake batter.

But you never know, right?

I needed to make a couple of things for a bake sale recently (go back to college, get roped into a bake sale — live and learn), so I used it as an excuse to try a trendy-sounding recipe: Funfetti Cake Batter Fudge.

I need to point out that my mind skipped right over the “Funfetti” portion of the recipe title, since that word implies the use of sprinkles and sprinkles are the worst thing that can happen to a nice, clean kitchen except for glitter or a grease fire.

It called for only five ingredients: sweetened condensed milk, white chocolate chips, vanilla extract, almond extract and sprinkles. I melted the first two ingredients together as instructed, then stirred in the extracts. I did NOT stir in the sprinkles, since the recipe kindly warned me that the fudge would turn an “ugly muddy color” if the sprinkles were stirred for too long and I am always likely to stir things for too long. Instead, I poured about half the melted goop into the pan, tossed some sprinkles in, and then poured the rest of the goop on top before tossing more sprinkles on. I let the fudge set up overnight.

Did it taste like cake batter? No. It tasted like almond extract. Really sweet, really rich almond extract. With crunchy sprinkles.

Little kids (and, apparently, some college students) will love it. Me, I’d rather make a cake and lick the beaters.

Bonus Behind-the-Scenes Footage

Yang inspects all Entirely Adequate photo shoots, provided he's awake.

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