You can, of course, make this with regular walnuts, but the black walnuts are special. 25 years ago my husband and I planted two black walnut trees. Nuts trees grow slowly, and decades passed with no nuts. A few years ago, a handful of nuts began to appear each year, but hardly anything worth harvesting----until 2011. This year, nuts rained down from the trees by the gallon. The husks will stain your hands a deep brown (they make an excellent dye), so we donned our rubber dish gloves and set to work. Now that the walnuts are husked, there's a long Maine winter ahead, time for cracking their famously hard shells with our Kenkel cracker. This winey, intense flavor of black walnuts makes this maple fudge especially delicious.

Read the recipe on Food52.com