9 Amazing Fudge Recipes to Sweeten Your Day

Easy Peppermint Fudge by Sumptuous Spoonfuls ~ Click here for the recipe

Christmas is right around the corner, with lots of family gatherings, we need make ahead, easy and delicious desserts. Fudge is that kind of dessert. Fudge also makes for a wonderful gift. Here are 9 fudge recipes for you. 

6 Pies for Thanksgiving

All in One Chocolate Pumpkin Pecan Pie by Food Hunter's Guide to Cuisine

What Thanksgiving table would be complete without a pie or two. Make sure to leave room after that big Thanksgiving dinner, turkey with all the fixings. Save space for a piece of pie, you'll be glad you did. Thanksgiving pie made easy. 

15 Apple Recipes - Weekly Roundup 6

Photo by Michele Eggert Phillips

Apples are a bargain, one of the most versatile fruit. There's more to apple than just apple pie. Weather your're looking for apple desserts or a savory fall recipe with apples, you're sure to love these amazing apple recipes. Do you like apples? Leave us know in the comments below. 

Kiwi Pie

Photo by Christine Lamb

No need to turn oven on this summer. This no bake pie recipe so easy and delicious. 

Morgan's Oreo Truffles

Photo by Christine Lamb

These bite size truffles require only 3 ingredients. 

Easy Pumpkin Pie

Some of us can’t imagine American Thanksgiving table without pumpkin pie.

Mini Apple Pies

Cinnamon has been in use by humans for thousands of years, as early as 2,000 B.C. Egyptians employed it, as well as the related spice cassia, as a perfuming agent during the embalming process, and it was mentioned in the Old Testament as an ingredient in anointing oil. 

Chocolate Banana Muffins

Goji berries grow on an evergreen shrub found in temperate and subtropical regions in China, Mongolia and in the Himalayas in Tibet.

Easy Apple Tart

Look for apples that are firm with rich coloring. Yellow and green apples with a slight blush are best. 

Creamy Strawberry Watermelon Pie

Watermelon is thought to have originated in southern Africa, where you find it growing wild. You can see where it gets its name. The flesh of this tasty fruit is over 90% water.

Cannoli Cones

Food historians believe cannoli date to the time of Sicily's Arab dominion by the Saracens may be even earlier...

Cracker Candy

In 1894 Milton Hershey’s started the Hershey Chocolate Company. 

Pecan Cupcakes

Before European settlement, pecans were widely consumed and traded by Native Americans.

Pie Filling Cake

Photo by Debo

Cranberries weren't always cranberries. For Eastern Indians, they were "sassamanesh.” Cape Cod Pequots and South Jersey Leni-Lenape tribes called them "ibimi," or bitter berry. And the Algonquins of Wisconsin dubbed the fruit "atoqua.” But it was the early German and Dutch settlers who started calling it the "crane berry” because of the flower’s resemblance to the head and bill of a crane. And finally, that was the name that stuck.

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes With Nutella Frosting

Peanut butter was invented and reinvented many times during history. Peanuts were known as early as 950 B.C. and originated in South America. The ancient Incas used peanuts and were known to have made it into a paste-like substance. As a crop peanuts emigrated from South America to Africa by early explorers and then traveled by trade into Spain who then traded the product to the American colonies. The first commercial peanut crop was grown in Virginia in the early to mid 1840's and in North Carolina beginning around 1818.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Adams Extract & Spice LLC currently produces well over 100 extracts, spices, and food colors in a variety of sizes, but the company will always be best known for its vanilla extract, Adams Best. 

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc. is America's favorite candy company, manufacturing and selling some of the world's most popular confectionary brands. Beginning in a modest New York candy store with the Tootsie Roll's introduction in 1896, the Chicago-based company has grown to become one of the country's largest candy companies, with operations throughout North America and with distribution channels in more than 75 countries.

Together, the Tootsie brands resonate strongly among every age group, culture, and demographic; for every occasion and event; and during every economic climate, qualifying them as truly enduring, iconic American confections.

As the number one after-dinner mint, Andes Crème de Menthe delivers a smooth blend of mint and chocolate flavors–the perfect post-meal treat.

The iconic, rectangular three-layered candy‚ green mint sandwiched between two thin cocoa-based layers‚ became instantly popular after its 1950 launch, and it has remained an American favorite ever since. The individually foil-wrapped, bite-sized pieces enhance any social gathering or event, yet remain equally popular as self-indulgent treats.

Andes Candies was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1921 by Andrew Kanelos. Originally called Andy's Candies, the business produced a variety of boxed chocolates which it sold from a small Chicago storefront. The business grew to include 150 stores. With the expansion of the business, a factory was built to supply the stores, and the name was changed to Andes Candies.

In 1950, the Andes store product line was increased to include the Crème de Menthe candy piece. This three-layer mint has remained the cornerstone of the brand. Today, this delicious and refreshing candy is the number one selling after-dinner mint.

Over the years, Andes has expanded to include a variety of flavors and packages, including the popular Cherry Jubilee, Mint Parfait, Toffee Crunch Thins, and seasonal Peppermint Crunch.

Andes joined the Tootsie family in 2000, expanding its line in 2003 to include Crème de Menthe baking chips. Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips were added in 2005.

By http://www.tootsie.com/

Coconut Banana Muffins

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet an savoury foods. Cinnamon trees are native to South East Asia and it origin was mysterious in Europe until the sixteenth century.

Cinnamon is harvested by growing the tree for two years then coppicing it. The next year, about a dozen shoots will form from the roots.

The branches harvested this way are processed by scraping off the outer bark, then beating the branch evenly with a hammer to loosen the inner bark. The inner bark is then prised out in long rolls. Only the thin inner bark is used; the outer, woody portion is discarded, leaving metre long cinnamon strips that curl into rolls “quills” on drying. Once dry, the bark is cut into 2.0 – 3.9 inch lengths for sale.

According to the International Herald Tribune, in 2006 Sri Lanka produced 90% of the worlds cinnamon, followed by China, India and Vietnam.

By http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon#History

Guest ~ Lemon Filled Coconut Cupcakes

Photo by Kathy Long

No food history today, my friends. If you would like to be a guest on Christine's Pantry contact me at christinespantry@gmail.com. We would love to have you here. Today's guest is Karen Long Cox. Karen doesn't have a blog. I know you will enjoy it. Thank you very much Karen for sharing your recipe. Thank you to all for being a part of Christine's Pantry.

Christine's Pantry now has a fan page on Facebook. Click here to follow Christine on Facebook. 

Little Baked Apple Pies

In the English colonies the apple pie had to wait for carefully planted pips, brought in barrels across the Atlantic, to become fruit-bearing apple trees, to be selected for their cooking qualities. In the meantime, the colonists were more likely to make their pies, or "pasties", from meat rather than fruit; and the main use for apples, once they were available, was in cider. But there are American apple pie recipes, both manuscript and printed, from the eighteenth century, and it has since become a very popular dessert.

Apple pie was a common food in eighteenth century Delaware. As noted by the New Sweden historian Dr. Israel Acrelius in a letter: “Apple pie is used throughout the whole year, and when fresh Apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children.”

A mock apple pie made from crackers was apparently invented by pioneers on the move during the nineteenth century who were bereft of apples. In the 1930s, and for many years afterwards, Ritz Crackers promoted a recipe for mock apple pie using its product, along with sugar and various spices.

Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the European colonisation of the Americas, "as American as apple pie" is a saying in the United States, meaning "typically American". In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, apple pie became a symbol of American prosperity and national pride. A newspaper article published in 1902 declared that “No pie-eating people can be permanently vanquished.” The dish was also commemorated in the phrase "for Mom and apple pie" - supposedly the stock answer of American soldiers in World War II, whenever journalists asked why they were going to war.

Advertisers exploited the patriotic connection in the 1970s with the commercial jingle "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet". There are claims that the Apple Marketing Board of New York State used such slogans as "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" and "as American as apple pie!", and thus "was able to successfully 'rehabilitate' the apple as a popular comestible" in the early twentieth century when prohibition outlawed (citation needed) the production of cider.

The unincorporated community of Pie Town, New Mexico is named in honour of the apple pie.

By http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_pie#Apple_pie_in_American_culture

The state of Vermont adopted apple pie as the official state pie in 1999.

I grow up in Springfield, Vermont. Beautiful state. I love the mountains. Growing up, us kids would run and play in the mountains. I loved the swimming holes. We went swimming in several beautiful places, but I remember this one swimming hole, we had to walk down this long trail, which seem like a long way. It was worth it when we arrived at the swimming hole. The water was cool and clean. It was so clean you could see the bottom. I miss those swimming holes. I don't like to swim in the lakes here in Texas.