the story of the fudge...

My mom was very ill at the time and I was looking for her fudge recipe. Not looking really as much as frantically searching. I had called my aunts and uncles that I thought might have it but nothing came up.  Could I have gone throughout my life without writing this one down? It was no where to be found in my mom's recipe files. Believe me...I had repeatedly flipped through the cards in  those little boxes!

You see, my mom had a knack for making fudge and I was responsible for passing it along so that generation after generation would know it's dreaminess. Why hadn't I paid closer attention when it counted?? Now I was desperate and felt I had let her down.

Nobody could copy my mom's fudge. It was her trademark and if you were lucky enough to receive some as a gift, usually during the holidays, it meant she loved you.

A lot.

She learned from her dad.  My grandpa.  I sure loved my grandpa.  He was a master at many things.  One of them being fudge, another being a gardener of flowers and vegetables, another being a raiser of mighty fine pigs, another being an artist with oils, or wood or what have you, another being good with a gun and another being so wonderful to my grandma. And the list goes on.


But I remember standing beside my mom many a time and watching the process unfold and being told that the tradition of this fudge would fall to me to learn and carry on.  She may have told my brothers the same thing but the importance rang in my ears and heart.  It was special and made with great care. The sugars were cooked to the perfect softball stage. Not determined by a candy thermometer, mind you, but detected by dropping a spoonful of the molten liquid into a cup of cold water and then manipulating it into a chocolate drop of melting fudge. Mom would set the cooled soft candy on my tongue and ask if I could taste the exact depth of chocolate and feel that the sugars had dissolved. I don't think I was paying attention to any of that stuff. I was just in it for the yummy gooey drop of warm chocolate in my mouth! ( I think I took turns with my brothers but I might have been selfish : ) It was no easy task but my mom was perfect at it and then she would take the boiling confection off the stove and pour it onto a perfectly chilled marble slab that had been sitting out on the back porch so as to stay cool until the moment she needed it. She would then beat it with a wooden spatula that my grandpa had made especially for the job of beating warm, soft chocloate into smooth and dreamy fudge. When the shine was gone from the surface it was ready to be shaped into long rolls that she stretched with the ease of an expert fudge maker along a piece of wax paper. While the fudge set, she would give me and my brothers a table knife to scrap the leftovers off the marble slab.
Mmmmm...that was so good!  Maybe the memory now, more so than the fudge itself.

Nah...it was definately the fudge.

I have the tools that my mom used.  Her slab and spatula.  Now I just need to learn the trade.

I've tried once.  It didn't work.  It was a disaster actually.


I'll try again.

Somehow I think no matter how proficient I become at fudge on a marble slab it will fail to compare to the delicious bite of chocolate that was made by her.

But to have her recipe, found by my sweet Aunt Karleen, really takes the cake!