NOBODY "NEEDS" FUDGE

My sister and I decide to take a walk down memory lane by making fudge on a snowy day.  When we were kids, my dad made what we considered the World's Greatest Fudge, and, to be honest, I have spent a large percentage of my adult life striving (unsuccessfully) to find fudge that rivals the homemade concoction.

So, on this snowy winter day, my sister and I are on a quest to recreate the Holy Grail of Fudge.

The first thing we do is dig up the semi-secret family recipe.  For many years, I believed that the Dad-tested recipe belonged to Fannie Farmer, a well-worn, golden-colored, hardcover recipe book that was a staple in our house.  However, in my teenage years, my father shocked both me and himself when the two of us realized that I was actually mistaken, that Fannie Farmer never had, nor would she ever have, anything to do with the famous family fudge.  (I refuse to reveal the actual source of the recipe because it is, after all, a family secret.)

The second thing my sister and I do, once we are ready to start creating, is cut the fudge recipe in half.  Neither one of us actually needs fudge, as if anyone truly does, but we want fudge, so we agree to make the smallest batch we can mathematically and chemically produce with any sense of ingredient integrity.  We measure, cook, check with two candy thermometers, then set the fudge to cool.

While our version of Dad's fudge is cooling, we go on an adventure and find ourselves at Len Libby Candy Store in Maine.  Here resides a life-sized moose carved out of 1,700 pounds of chocolate.  There is also a milk chocolate bear and a large white-dyed-blue chocolate pond.  One of the candy stations is giving samples of fudge, so we snag two small pieces and taste it: like all of the generic fudge before it, it tastes good ... but not great.  It is certainly fudge on a celestial, holy scale, but it is not the Holy Grail of chocolate fudge.

When we arrive back at my sister's house, we still have the residual taste of store-generated fudge on our tongues, so we cut into our homemade fudge to compare.  The consistency is the same as the store-brought fudge, but the taste ... superior; an extra-sweet, tongue-tickling fudge experience.

It's not just our childhood memory playing tricks on us: our fudge honestly is superior to all others.

Over two days we do some damage to the tiny batch of fudge, but there is still some left when I leave to come home.  Clearly, the true winners are my sister and I.  We have watched our waistlines, exercised cautious snacking, and, most important above all else, we have achieved Fudge Nirvana.