Time for the fudge recipe that was requested during Lent…

My mother was allergic to everything. Hence, she did not use milk or cream in her fudge recipe. She also was a very busy woman, taking care of nine children on zero money. So no frills, like constant beating of the fudge to give it a smooth creamy texture. This fudge is rugged, crystalline, serious stuff.

3 cups of sugar

2 ounces of Baker’s unsweetened chocolate (used to be called 2 squares but inflation has struck heavily, 2 ounces is now 4 squares…)

1 cup of water

Mix it all together and cook at a medium temperature, on a stove from 1955. Did I forget to say ~+~+~ Use a Large Pot?~+~+~

Use a Large Pot. This stuff boils up about to at least four times the original volume.

My mother could tell by looking at the bubbles when the stuff was nearing completion. I think that this is because the bubbles get larger as the syrup mixture starts creating more bonds. That’s certainly what happens with jam. If you let jam get very large bubbles and then cook longer,  you will also get a solid mass in your jam jar IF you can even pour it fast enough to get it out of the pot. 

For the rest of us, as the mixture starts bubbling we get a small glass bowl, and half fill it with cold water. Drop a bit of the bubbly chocolate mixture into the water from the stirring utensil. I think Mom had a large metal spoon. Long-handled wood spoons will also work. Check the results.

–The drop simply dissolved into the water. You are nowhere near done. 

–There is a blob at the bottom of the dish that you can push around but it has no definite edges. You are not done. But you can fish that blob out, and slurp it up. Tasty. 

–The drop is soft, but stays distinctly defined, and can be pushed around and lifted out of the water. Okay! Pull that pot off the heat, and push to the back of the stove to cool. 

–If the drop is harder, you are in trouble. Pull that pot off the heat, and stir, and maybe add stuff, like a bit of cream or butter. Then stir some more and pour it into your buttered receptacle and, oh well. I bet it gets eaten by the hearty types.

{Here is an article about testing sugar syrups that might be useful. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/techniques/how_to_test_for_stages_of_sugar_syrup  You might want to have read it before you start the cooking process.}

Some of us are going to let the mixture cool briefly, while we do something.  (There was always a something.) Then we add a square of butter and a teaspoon of vanilla, and we do stir for a bit. Then we go off to butter the 8 inch cake tin or pie plate or glass baking dish (which some child was supposed to do, and whined about), and pick up the toy the baby threw across the room. 

Stir some more, and realize a crisis is approaching. The seven-year old just burned the pillowcase she was ironing, or the nine-year old is bleeding because he has no sense, or a toddler got a splinter running across the old parquet floor. So pour the fudge into the buttered cake tin, scraping madly, and go deal with the problem. ***

Voila! Crystallized sugary chocolate. In about an hour. Although everyone sneaky enough will cheat, using a spoon to nibble/test around the edges. 

Since the fudge wasn’t stirred enough, there are some science lessons. Cooking the sugar/water mixture and then cooling it, creates crystals. Stirring causes the crystals to stay small and well distributed. Conversely, the lack of stirring allows the crystals to grow larger. Granite is like unstirred fudge.

With this robust and hearty confection, the crystals also pile up in the middle of the cake tin or pie plate or glass baking dish, wherever they were poured. The less-crystalline syrup fills in the edges, causing a certain difference in texture between the edges and the middle. The characteristic swirl of chocolate rising slightly above the general level, in the middle of the cake tin or pie plate or glass baking dish, is caused by swift hardening, even as the mixture is poured. 

If you don’t get that little extra pouf you probably could have stirred a bit more. Were you afraid of the whole mixture hardening in your pot? Probably smart of you. Hand the bystanders some spoons, and get out of the way. 

*** All of this assumes that this fudge was being made under normal circumstances. However, if we were scared awake by thunder, we could ask for fudge to be made. I remember hanging out in the basement while a tornado threatened, late at night. And I do remember the fudge cooking pan being brought down, and stirred, while we waited. Oddly, I don’t remember eating any. I’ll bet I did, though.