Quick Holiday Goodies.

If you’re anything like me , the Holidays have just crept up on you! Now, we’re all in panic mode running about trying to get our list of presents bought and to-do’s done. In the midst of all that somewhere in the back of your mind you know you have to make cookies or fudge or pies, something! But where are you going to find the time?

Allow me to show you my secret little helper that has saved me hours in the kitchen without sacrificing that “homemade” taste. Sure, you can go buy cookies or those tubes of dough. But isn’t there something just a little bit better about making your own? 

This tiny 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk can help you get through the holidays with little or no stress. There are hundreds of recipes on the internet using this stuff that take less than 10 minutes to make. In the time its taken me to write this blog post I could have already made enough fudge for twenty people (not kidding). Fudge is actually one of my families traditions at Christmas. I remember watching my mom using the coco powder, the butter, the milk, the sugar and beating and beating it into submission just to get the mixture to the correct consistency. It was really hard work! Not anymore thanks to the sweetened condensed milk.

The basic fudge recipe is as follows. From there you can add any mix in’s you’d like, once the melted mixture is removed from the heat. Try using  nuts or crumbled Oreo’s or M & M’s or toffee pieces or broken pieces of peppermint bark, the list is only limited by your imagination. You can also use peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips or butterscotch chips or combine any of those chips with the semi sweet chocolate chips. You can even layer the different types of fudge on one another. Here’s the basic recipe.

• 3 Cups semi sweet chocolate chips
• One 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Dash of salt
• Optional mix-in’s,  nuts, candies, cookies, marshmallows.
• In a heavy pot place the first four ingredients together and heat over medium heat stirring constantly until completely melted and smooth. Remove from heat and add the mix-in ingredient if desired. 
• Pour mixture into a 6×6 inch dish lined with wax paper and set inside refrigerator to cool for about 1 -2 hours. Cut into squares.

This next recipe is so simple it only has four ingredients but don’t be fooled, it’s full of gooey rich chocolatey goodness! Some people call these Drop Brownie Cookies, and since I can’t come up with a better name we’ll go with that.

• 2 Cups semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1 stick of butter
• 1- 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1 1/3 Cups all purpose flour
• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine first three ingredients in a heavy pot and heat over medium heat , stirring constantly until melted. Remove from heat. Add flour and mix completely.
• Drop onto an ungreased cookie sheet using a teaspoon, about two inches apart. Bake for 7-8 minutes and remove from oven and allow to cool on a cooling rack. You may have to adjust your cooking time depending on how crunchy you like your brownie cookies.

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This next recipe has saved me hours at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s for a simple yet always perfect pumpkin pie. Keeping with the time saving element I’ll use a premade frozen crust. Some good ones exist and we can talk about those and pie crust in another post. Here’s the recipe.

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees
• 1- 9 inch frozen pie shell (your choice of brand)
• 1- 15 ounce can of pumpkin 
• 1-14 ounce can of Sweetened condensed milk
• 2 eggs slightly beaten
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• Mix all ingredients together (except pie crust) and then pour the mixture into the unbaked frozen pie shell. Place in the 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake for another 40-50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle of the pie comes out clean. Set on a rack to cool before serving.

As you can see these are just a few of the really quick recipes you can whip up using the sweetened condensed milk. I’ve made the pumpkin pie and while it’s baking I’ll go ahead and make a few batches of fudge. These recipes are real time savers and I hope you give at least one of them a try. If you have any quick holiday recipes you’d like to share please do so in the comments below or send them to me in an email and I’ll try and get them posted soon. Thanks for reading Boone Appétit!