Nancy didn't realize the mistake until after she opened the can. Though momentarily frustrated, she eventually obtained the evaporated milk and made her delicious fudge.
However, one problem remained--what could be done with the opened can of sweetened condensed milk?
To be honest, I wasn't even quite sure what sweetened condensed milk could be used for. On New Year's Eve, I researched uses for the milk. A lot of my initial search results were from websites like about.com and e-how. While those websites are sometimes helpful, I don't always trust their cooking advice.
But then I found a blog post on sweetened condensed milk by Lydia Walshin at The Perfect Pantry. Walshin is a writer and a chef who blogs about the ingredients in her pantry and how she uses these ingredients in her recipes. I find her concept of blogging about ingredients and what they can be used for--rather than just blogging about recipes--particularly useful for my sweetened condensed milk situation. I think her site will be a good tool to help me prevent future food waste, because I often find myself with this general problem: "I have X ingredient, it will go bad soon if I don't use it, and I have no idea what to use it for!"
Anyway, in addition to including her microwave recipe for Dulce De Leche, she links to a few other recipes that call for sweetened condensed milk. Since my goal was to use up ingredients I had--not buy more ingredients--I chose to make this 5 Minute Fudge Recipe. While fudge is not particularly healthy, I was intrigued by the idea of comparing this recipe with Nancy's recipe. Because hers was more time consuming and contained more ingredients, I assumed it would be better. I wanted to prove this hypothesis, so I tried it.
The recipe was extremely easy. It only has two ingredients--chocolate and the milk. But because there are only two ingredients, it definitely requires quality chocolate to make it good. Quality can be defined in many ways, so I won't tell you what kind to use. It's whatever kind of chocolate you like. Because I'm so waste conscious, I was excited to get to use up two different kinds of chocolate that I wasn't even aware we had until my mom pointed them out. One of them was some good baking chocolate, while the other was a ziploc bag of unidentified chocolate. I wouldn't necessarily suggest using random, who-knows-where-it-came-from chocolate for the best results, but I'm not picky. My main goal was just to use up what we had.
One thing to be aware of--the fudge turned out a bit hard around the edges. I'm not sure if this was because of the chocolate I used, or if it is just a result of the simplistic recipe. I'm glad I didn't cut the fudge up into smaller pieces. Because I left it in one large chunk, the middle was still soft and good. The hard edges might be rectified by covering it when you refrigerate it, or wrapping individual pieces if you decide to cut it up.
I'd show you a picture of the final product, but most of it has been eaten up. One of my mom's friends enjoyed it so much they wanted some to take home to their family. I also really liked it, but Nancy wasn't a fan, and my mom doesn't like sweets at all. It's probably not the best fudge recipe, but it was the best recipe in for my particular needs. It also would be a great recipe for my fellow college students, because you really only need a microwave to cook it!
Do you have any good fudge recipes? Have you discovered any new recipes recently in an attempt to use up unwanted ingredients? Comment below!
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