3 Ingredient Chocolate Fudge with Responsibly Sourced Chocolate!

I come from a family that makes cookies during the holiday season.  I have fond memories of my parents and siblings all working together to churn out batches and batches of cookies, particularly chocolate chip cookies.  I’m certain that’s when I learned to eat cookie dough, because once when I was in elementary school, one of my younger brothers and I got sick after a huge baking blitz. My mom completely blamed the fact that we were about 2 dozen baked cookies short of what we should have made that day.  In addition to chocolate chip cookies, we used to make spritz cookies, some kind of nut balls rolled in sugar and awesome chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

 
Delicious Fudge

Delicious Fudge

I don’t assume that everything I do is great, but I know that my baking is popular.  To this day I have friends from high school who ask me to make home baked cookies if we’re getting together and I LOVE to comply!  I was thrilled to teach my 8 year-old daughter to bake this weekend.  We made several batches of chocolate chip cookies and even with some mis-haps, they came out pretty wonderful.  Well, the dough is wonderful, we’ll have to see how the cookies are when I bake them up later this week for cookie exchanges and parties (if Jonathan doesn’t eat all of it before then).
 
Perhaps the simplest recipe that I learned from my mom is chocolate fudge.  We make an awesome chocolate fudge and I’ve been wanting to share the recipe here, but I just couldn’t figure out the “green” connection, other than it’s made from scratch.  Then the most wonderful thing happened when I was shopping at Costco recently. They were giving out samples of Kirkland Chocolate Chips which are responsibly sourced and reasonably priced!
Chocolate chips from responsibly sourced cacao

Responsibly sourced chocolate chips from Costco

We’ve been paying a lot of attention lately to the sources of things we buy.  We’ve written about fair trade chocolate and the labor practices of companies and we’ve been learning a lot more about these topics. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the battle against Hershey’s and other big chocolate companies to stop child and forced labor in the cocoa fields. The fact that they force children and others to harvest cocoa is why I won’t let my children buy Kit-Kats.  When my daughter pressed me to tell her why,  I told her straight out that it is because they force children her age to pick cocoa instead of going to school.  I’m pretty horrified by the whole situation.

 

This hopefully helps you understand why I am honestly relieved to find responsibly sourced and reasonably priced chocolate chips at Costco.  Not only reasonably priced, but cheaper than the Toll House Chocolate Chips. If I told you how often my children eat chocolate chips, I think you’d lose all respect for me!  To be clear, “responsibly sourced” means that they are not certified by the “Fair Trade” organization, but that they work directly with the growers to ensure that everyone in the product line gets paid a reasonable wage. From the bag:

responsibly sourced

What does responsibly sourced mean?

What does this mean for cocoa farmers and their families? It means that they get fair prices for managing their farms through pre- and post-harvest training. The program is bringing about improved community infrastructure, farmer livelihoods, education and healthcare.

So, our family’s chocolate fudge recipe, featuring responsibly sourced chocolate chips!
 
  • 2 c. Kirkland Chocolate Chips
  • 1 can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
Melt the chocolate chips, either in a double boiler, or on medium power in the microwave.  Chocolate chips retain their shape when soft, so you have to stir to tell that they are melted.  Stir in the sweetened condensed milk.  Then stir in the vanilla.  Pour into a buttered 9″x9″ pan.  Chill.  Cut & Serve.

These are awesome.  And really simple.  They’d make a good cooking lesson for Cub Scouts or someone that needs to try their hand at cooking something, but you don’t want it to be too hard to mess up.

If my friends are lucky, I’ll share some later in the week.

As a double bonus, if you’re at Costco for the chips, pick up their Kirkland vanilla, which is also responsibly sourced.  Costco worked with farmers to develop a source of quality vanilla where the farmers and their families are also assisted with the development of their whole community.

Life as Mom has a swap of Christmas Favorite Recipes on her site, what’s your favorite thing to make for the holidays?
 
Happy Greening!
Alicia
Kirkland Chocolate Chips Ingredients: chocolate liquor, sugar, soy lecithin (an emulsifier) and Vanilla

No milk or high-fructose corn syrup



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Comments

  1. Mmm such an easy and yummy recipe! You know, Costco has been pleasantly surprising me with their expanding line of organics and now ethically sourced products! I’m pinning this recipe!

  2. This looks so good! Wonder if I can sub the milk for something non-dairy. Do you know where I can find a full ingredient list on the chips?

  3. I absolutely LOVE this fudge recipe. It’s the one I use every year. It’s so easy! I make mine right in the microwave, and it comes out so smooth and creamy. I hate that fudge that’s so dry it just falls apart on you. This fudge is excellent!

  4. there is Bad news about these chocolate chips… The Food Empowerment Project just learned that Kirkland sources their cacao from the Ivory Coast – so they can not recommend them. Darn it, they knew “responsibly sourced” was a great marketing term, but in this case it is not true!
    Kirkland will be added to the “Cannot recommend but at Least they Responded” list.
    http://www.foodispower.org/chocolatelist.php

    • Anonymous, I understand that the worst abuses of workers and most child slavery is in the Ivory Coast and West Africa, therefore I think it is *good* that Kirkland is working there to educate farmers and pay a fair price for the chocolate. We cannot abandon this countries, we have to help those people.

      • Kirkland is only getting cheap chocolate there.
        When asked, they said nothing about educating farmers.
        The Ivory Coast is steeped in slavery – to do business there makes them complicit.
        You can learn more about this issue from the Food Empowerment Project:
        http://www.foodispower.org/

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