This will be the 12th Christmas since my mother passed. Although I miss her keenly throughout the year, the first holidays were brutal. One of the ways I cope is to embrace some of the traditions I miss so much and find new ways to share them.
One of the first things I remember learning to do with my mom was to make candy, specifically, fudge. She learned from her mother, who learned the recipe from her mom. It was a special holiday treat for us, since it was expensive to make and took several hours. We often got a piece of carefully horded fudge on Thanksgiving, carefully wrapped in tin foil, but only if grandma or mom had time. At Christmas, however, it was part of the tradition – there was always a tin of it out for guests.
I remember making batches of it once the season turned – most of it in the pot above. It’s a fussy, picky recipe prone to screwups, which we ate anyway. Learning to do it right simply meant you didn’t make hockey pucks or burn it. If the fudge didn’t candy it became frosting for a cake or ice cream sauce; if it did, it meant hours of cutting tin foil squares and wrapping it.
I have no daughters to pass the tradition on to, but thanks to the internet, I can share it with you.
The recipe (if this is hard to read you can click the image to see a larger version):
Most important detail? Don’t stir this fudge once you start cooking it. Even if you think you know better, don’t – it will ruin the batch, I swear – I’ve tried it. Just let the heat, pot and temperature deal with that for you – you’ll be rewarded with an enjoyable treat.
If you’re thinking of trying this recipe out, I’ve loaded up a Flickr set of the stage by stage process so you can avoid all the mistakes I made along the way of learning to create an edible batch. The flickr example is for a double batch of peanut butter fudge without nuts, enjoy!
* To adjust for flavor, 1 square = 1 ounce, ergo 4 oz of peanut butter chips = 4 oz of chocolate.