Around here, Sunday nights are for big dinners with friends and family. We sit around our big farmhouse table after dinner feeling full and happy as we laugh and share crazy stories. (We'll get to those later...)
But things always get very serious right around 8 pm. That's when dessert time rolls around. It's a big deal.
Sometimes its pie often its cupcakes or WAX ORCHARDS
quick chocolate cake... yum! But last night we had a taste test. After some spring cleaning in the pantry, we'd unearthed half a box of Bakers unsweetened chocolate and so we put the venerable confection brand to the test against our humble
CLASSIC FUDGE. We followed their directions for chocolate sauce on the Bakers box with scrupulous precision, adding mountains of white refined sugar and dairy to their 100% cocoa squares, slowly melting them together in a symphony of aromas. But as confectioners ourselves, we noticed there was something we use in our product that was a glaring omission in the Baker's recipe: natural vanilla extract!
[If you're as serious about dessert as we are around here then you've doubtless engaged with some well meaning but misguided naysayer in the chocolate v. vanilla debate. Vanilla proponents will always wield the culinary excuse that chocolate needs vanilla to be good but vanilla does not need chocolate to be delicious. Whatever. That may be true but chocolate is still better. End of story.]
So to level the playing field, we stirred in a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract to the very traditional sauce that was slowly heating on the stove top. The whole process took about twelve minutes and in the meantime we grabbed a few dollops of CLASSIC FUDGE and microwaved it on LOW in a glass bowl for 20 seconds. Then we cut cubes of angel food, strawberry, even pineapple!
At last it was time to taste test and to be sure, the Bakers chocolate sauce was delicious, warm and gooey. But it wasn't silky like our CLASSIC FUDGE and it lacked the decadently rich flavor that our cocoa delivers. WAX ORCHARDS wins hands down...and no, we're not as biased as you might think.
We know why our fudge tastes better. It's not simply because our handpicked blend of Dutch cocoas makes for a richer, denser flavor. It's not because we use only the finest, all natural vanilla.
It's because we don't use sugar! Yes, our concentrated fruit juice sweetener, FRUIT SWEET makes everything richer, denser, more flavorful. Because it's half again as sweet as refined sugar, you use less of it. That allows for a higher percentage of the principal flavoring ingredients. And although the flavor of FRUIT SWEET is neutral, it acts as a catalyst releasing the robust flavors in other things, like antioxidant-rich Dutch cocoa.
So not only did the CLASSIC FUDGE outshine the traditional sauce in a matter of taste, it out performs it as a matter of health: sugar free, gluten free, vegan and full of natural fruit fiber.
Our friend Mary Goit makes her Belly Timber Bars with premium organic granola and WAX ORCHARDS concentrated fruit juice sweetener. Originally, she made the bars as a healthy snack for her kids because she was concerned about giving them processed snack foods. She based her recipe on the granola her own mother had baked for the family. But once the bar's nutritional anaysis came back, Mary soon realized she had much more than a children's afternnon snack. 
