Thursday, December 30, 2010

There's no such thing as bad fudge....

Wow...I must have fallen off the face of the earth...as I haven't blogged in over a month.  Looking back, I have been consumed with "lots of nothing".  But...here I am, and believe it or not, I am going to share my Grandma's Cream Fudge recipe.  Her "Secret Fudge Recipe".  The "Super Duper Secret Fudge Recipe"...the one that if I tell you about it, I'll have to take action to ensure you can never tell anyone about it.  I have believed this about my Grandma's fudge for years....lots of years, in fact decades...And then it happened...I found that 4th grade cookbook and guess what recipe was in it...YES!  the "Super Duper Secret Cream Fudge Recipe"...WHAT?  How could that happen?  How could my mom have let me disclose the family secret...am I now going to have to travel the continent and ensure that all copies of that cookbook have been destroyed and memories wiped clean?  OMG!  But Wait!!!...no worries, even if someone has the recipe, they can't make the fudge.  In fact, hardly any one in the family can make the fudge.  My grandma used to make it and we would find pans of it in the fridge, hoping it would set up, we would find pans of it that were so hard they would need to soak for hours to clean...but to us, there was no bad fudge..there was the flat, sliver dollar fudge, there was the hard, sugary fudge and then there was the ultimate...a smooth, creamy "dollup" of heavenly chocolate.  As Bubba says, it just melts in your mouth.  These creamy dollups make rare appearances, this recipe is hard.  In fact few family members make it any more, they wait for my cousin to make it. He has been given the elite status as "the best at making Grandma's fudge".  We practically bow down to him when we talk about fudge.  Honestly, some of the fudge he has made isn't that good, but at least he made it and to us, there is no such thing as bad fudge.  Over the years, I have tried to make my Grandma's fudge...going to the lock box, dusting off the password that opens up home of the super secret recipe, closing all the blinds so no one would get a peak at the recipe, even varying my trips to the store so that no one could figure out the ingredients, mixing up my routine, just in case some one has figured out that I am making my Grandma's fudge.  All of this to end up with globs of sugary chocolate or little lakes of chocolate on wax paper.  But recently I decided to try my hand at the Super Duper Secret Cream Fudge. (After all, I am in a new neighborhood and people will be less likely to observe my behavior or recognize the scent).  Seriously,  I wanted to take it to my mother for Christmas.  I went through bags of sugar, boxes of chocolate and pints of cream, 4 batches worth...each one, a little bit better than the previous.  I only threw a few pieces away and gently wrapped the rest  up and took it on the plane with us. We joked the entire time about the bad box, the medium box and the good box...always saying...there is no bad fudge.  With some practice, I think I could be a good back up for my cousin, maybe even get a curtsey from family members at the thought of my Cream Fudge.  So while I am disclosing the ingredients "globally", you'll note...there are no instructions...If I shared those....well, you know.