holiday cookery: s'mores fudge for everyone

Mike loves fudge. Mike loves s'mores. Mike loves chocolate. This is my love letter to him in the form of a tin full of s'mores fudge.

Even if he didn't love chocolate (or if you don't--because it takes all kinds to make good cookery, right?), I could make something like this. You can, too. It's easy peasy. Not even kidding. Four ingredients; less if you don't want crust or if you don't want marshmallows or if you just want plain ol' fudge.

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Heck, you can make this vegan, make it full of bacon, add stuff to this--peanut butter chips, cinnamon chips, mint chips, whatever you like. You can take any element away, and it's still delicious. That's the mark of a good recipe.

Let's do this. Recipe after the jump.

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So you want to make s'mores fudge, eh?

Things you will need:

Equipment:

• a small sauce pot, no less than 2 quarts (trust me, I learned the hard way), cleaned and thoroughly bone dry
  
• a stove, camp stove, grill, campfire, bonfire, or heat source of some type (note: it has been brought to my attention that a blowtorch could also be used--good eye, kid)
• a heat-proof small rubber spatula
  
• a pie tin (see ingredients; you'll thank me)
  
• optional: baking sheet, for the clumsy or otherwise kitchen challenged (read: again, me)

Ingredients:

• one 14 fl. oz. can of La Lechera sweetened condensed milk*
  
• one 12 oz. bag of bittersweet chocolate** chips
  
• one cup of miniature marshmallows***
  
• one graham cracker crust****
  

Instructions:

1. Get your crap together. Seriously. Lay everything out so it's easy to find. Don't be like me and run around like a chicken with your head cut off in your whopping eight square feet of kitchen because you can't find anything. Open the can, open the bag of chips, open the crust. You will thank me for the duration of this recipe.
   
2. Put the sauce pot over the heat source or on the stove at medium heat; pour in the sweetened condensed milk. STIR. STIR LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT, and don't let it scorch. This is important.
3. As the sweetened condensed milk is warming up, dump in the whole bag of chocolate chips. It's okay to test a couple to make sure they're not poisoned. No one is judging here; this is your safe cooking space. Continue stirring like your life depends on it.
4. The chips will begin to melt and almost seize--this is not a bad thing. Keep stirring. Do you see a theme here? Pretend it's a workout for your biceps. Stir. Once it's the thickness of good hot fudge (you'll know what I mean), quickly take it off the heat completely and turn off the burner.
5. Immediately pour and scrape every bit of the fudge mixture into the crust or uncrusted, lined pan. Yes, you can save a bit aside for testing; again, don't feed your loved ones poisoned fudge. Testing is important. Smooth it out until it looks like a neatly frosted cake.
6. Top immediately with marshmallows; set aside to come to room temperature, then chill overnight before serving. Bonus points: pop that into the oven at 350F for five minutes or so to brown the marshmallows. Yeah, you get the idea. S'mores. Chill again before slicing into very tiny pieces for serving.

*If you want to make this dairy free, easy-peasy: 14 fl. oz. (read: 1.75 cups) of sweetened condensed milk can be substituted for ANY dairy-free sweetened condensed milk alternative, or just plain old cream of coconut. Not coconut cream--that's a different thing. Cream of coconut. Helpful link to Baking Bites included with a description. This can also be made sugar free with sugar-free sweetened condensed milk and sugar free marshmallows and sugar free chocolate chips. Yes, all of those things exist. I'll even help with those links in a bit.

**Hate chocolate? Use any other kind of melting chip or baking chip. Cinnamon, peanut butter, mint, white chocolate, vanilla, grape--yes, grape exists--as does orange. Yep. I might have a flavored baking chip problem.

***Miniature marshmallows are made of fun and win. If you hate them, and subsequently fun, you can leave them out. I'm okay with that, as long as you're okay with it, too. Fun substitutions: pumpkin candies, peppermint candies crushed, Nerds candy, Pop Rocks or popping candy, bacon (yes, it's good, stop judging me), pretzels, chopped nuts, more chocolate chips--anything. Leave it plain, even. Who am I to judge your chocolate mouth fiesta?

****If you hate crust or want a gluten-free option, seriously--leave it out. It'll be fine. I'd recommend lining your dish or pie tin with parchment paper, though, or the very least about a half roll of aluminum foil. Fudge is messy business.

*****If you want a different crust, any premade cookie/cracker based pie crust is delicious. Think like this:

• Oreo crust with vanilla chips and crushed cookie topping = cookies and cream fudge
  
• Shortbread crust with orange and vanilla chips swirled and coconut topping = creamsicle fudge
  
• Oreo crust with mint and chocolate chips swirled, no topping = mint chocolate fudge
  
• Pretzel crust with milk and dark chocolate chips swirled, with bacon topping = foodie explosion
  

Are you seeing where I'm going with this? Yes you are. Yes, you are.

Go forth and fudge with me.