Chocolate Fudge Pops

Gabe and I are resurrecting Cooking in the Creek after a few months of no posts. Many people have been asking about the blog, so we are back with new posts by popular demand! A lot has happened since out last post. We have been getting settled in our new apartment that we moved into in January, building furniture to make our place feel more like home, and most recently we got engaged! I’m sure wedding planning might take away more attention from Cooking in the Creek, but we will still do our best to share our most yummy recipes!

Recently, we began cooking recipes from a new cookbook called “Thug Kitchen”. I picked up the book from a gift table at a holiday work event and at the time I had no idea what the cookbook was about. Below is a summary. By the way, they use a lot of curse words. It keeps things interesting to say the least.

Thug Kitchen started their wildly popular website to inspire people to eat some Goddamn vegetables and adopt a healthier lifestyle. Beloved by Gwyneth Paltrow (“This might be my favorite thing ever”) and named Saveur’s Best New Food blog of 2013–with half a million Facebook fans and counting–Thug Kitchen wants to show everyone how to take charge of their plates and cook up some real f*cking food.

Yeah, plenty of blogs and cookbooks preach about how to eat more kale, why ginger fights inflammation, and how to cook with micro-greens and nettles. But they are dull or pretentious as hell–and most people can’t afford the hype.

Thug Kitchen lives in the real world. In their first cookbook, they’re throwing down more than 100 recipes for their best-loved meals, snacks, and sides for beginning cooks to home chefs. (Roasted Beer and Lime Cauliflower Tacos? Pumpkin Chili? Grilled Peach Salsa? Believe that sh*t.) Plus they’re going to arm you with all the info and techniques you need to shop on a budget and go and kick a bunch of ass on your own.

This book is an invitation to everyone who wants to do better to elevate their kitchen game. No more ketchup and pizza counting as vegetables. No more drive-thru lines. No more avoiding the produce corner of the supermarket. Sh*t is about to get real.

Here is the Thug Kitchen trailer. You have got to watch this. It’s the best part.

Gabe and I have tried a handful of recipes and so far they have all been delicious! We hope to share the rest soon. To start though, try these Chocolate Fudge Pops! They are ridiculously simple to make and only require three ingredients! Can’t beat that. Enjoy!

Chocolate Fudge Pops

Prep time: 10 minutes

Freeze time: 8 hours or overnight

Total time: About 8 hours or prepare the day before

Yield: Makes about 3 1/3 cups filling, which makes 12 pops in a standard mold but varies depending on whatever mold you use.

Ingredients

1 cup vanilla almond or your favorite nondairy milk*

1 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

12 ounces firm silken tofu**

12 popsicle sticks & 12 small paper cups

OR Popsicle molds

*I used regular milk (1%) because that’s what I had on hand

**This is the tofu in aseptic packaging. It can be found on the grocery store shelf, near the soy sauce, not tofu packaged in water in the fridge.

Instructions

Warm up the milk on the stove top or in the microwave so that it is warm but not super hot. Next you need to melt the chocolate. You can melt it either by slowly heating it in the microwave in 30-second increments and stirring until its melted – OR you build a double boiler like a boss. Grab a medium saucepan and fill it with 1 or 2 inches of water. Throw an all-metal bowl on top of that and make sure the whole mouth of the pan is covered and that the water inside isn’t touching the bottom of the bowl. The steam will heat the bowl and melt the chips; just keep stirring and the chocolate and trust the method. When the chocolate looks all smooth, turn off the heat. This whole process should take about three minutes.

Once the chocolate is melted, add it, the milk, and the tofu to a blender and mix it up. Make sure everything is well combined and there are no secret chocolate chunks hiding out. Pour this into your molds and stick them in the freezer for about 40 minutes. At that point, take out your pop molds and then push the sticks in. Freezing these a little bit first helps makes sure you won’t push the stick so far in that you end up with some sad kabob. They will keep for at least a month in the freezer.

*I used six plastic popsicle molds and had a bit of filling left over which I put in the fridge. It turned into a really delicious pudding! So keep that in mind! It is a versatile recipe 🙂

Recipe inspired by Thug Kitchen Cookbook.