Tea Room Recipe #38 - Barb's Country Tea Room and Yankee Peddlers (Osage Beach, Missouri)

Earlier this month, my husband and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary with a day in the north Georgia mountains. We enjoyed riding around and hitting all the antique malls along the way (or at least, I did!), and he asked if there was anything special I wanted to look for in the mountains. Yes, a fudge shop, I said. You always see fudge shops in the mountains, and since I hadn't had any fudge in ages, I wanted some. This week, I found a super easy recipe for a fudgey treat in one of my tea room cookbooks and decided to give it a try.

This cookbook is titled "A Collection of Favorite Recipes" from Barb's Country Tea Room and Yankee Peddlers in Osage Beach, Missouri. There's no date on the cookbook, but because of the ducks and country blue coloring I'm betting it's from the eighties. And I was delighted to find that what is now called Yankee Peddlers Tea Room is still in business there! It sounds like a fun place to enjoy tea and antiquing.

This recipe is called Quick 'N Easy Pecan Penuche, and penuche is a word I wasn't familiar with. (Did you know you can find the pronunciation of words by looking them up at the Merriam-Webster website and clicking on the audio icon? Go here to check it out!) I learned that penuche is "fudge made usually of brown sugar, butter, cream or milk, and nuts," which is exactly what's in this decadent treat. I think I'll start calling all my fudge penuche because it sounds so exotic. Just a single one-inch bite served in a paper cup would be a nice addition to the dessert course at teatime, don't you think?

Quick 'N Easy Pecan Penuche

1/2 cup butter or margarine (I used butter)
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup milk
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 cup chopped pecans (I used a mix of walnuts and pecans)

Prepare an 8-inch square baking dish with cooking spray. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter, add the brown sugar and boil. Reduce heat to low and stir for 2 minutes. Add milk, increase heat to medium and again bring to a boil. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool to room temperature. Add confectioners sugar and stir until mixture is smooth and creamy. Add 3/4 cup of the nuts and combine. Pour mixture into pan, then add the remaining 1/4 cup of nuts and lightly press into the mixture. Refrigerate until firm, or overnight. Cut into 1-inch squares and store in fridge, covered, up to 2 weeks. Yields about 5-1/2 dozen pieces.