How NOT to Make Spoon Fudge

...or any kind of fudge really.

I know, it looks cute.  Don't let it fool you.

 

My mom really likes chocolate, so when I decided to make spoon fudge a thought crossed my mind.  I wonder why mom never made fudge?  It turns out I should have gotten the answer to that question before I started.  Mom never made fudge when we were growing up because it never turned out.  Well, I’ve inherited my mom’s ability to make fudge.  During my spoon fudge making endeavor, I learned some valuable lessons.  While I DO NOT recommend following my method and recipe for spoon fudge, I do recommend reading my lessons learned before attempting to make your own.

Lesson 1:

If you are throwing a Nursery Rhyme themed baby shower, and want to have a spoon be the favor just dip the spoon in chocolate, and tell the guests to stir their hot chocolate or coffee with it.  I don’t care if it is July.  Trust me on this one.

Hey! diddle, diddle

The cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the moon

The little dog laughed to see such sport

And the dish ran away with the SPOON!

 

If you choose to ignore Lesson 1, and want a dish of spoon fudge to go with the spoon, you will need to find a good recipe.  This part will be surprisingly hard.  I ended up using Pumpkin Tart’s recipe for Spoon Fudge.  I’m not saying this is a bad recipe, it just didn’t work out for me.  I made my share of mistakes along the way.

Spoon Fudge (from Pumpkin Tart)
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 Tbsp. refrigerated coffee creamer (not powdered),any flavor OR 1 tablespoon milk
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons corn syrup
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla (or flavor of your choosing)

I needed evaporated milk, creamer, and unsweetened chocolate.  I also wasn’t sure how much I needed to make, but based on the volume of ingredients, I figured I needed three batches to fill my 13 – 4oz. jelly jars.  So, I bought two (1.5 cups each) cans of evaporated milk and 2 – 4oz. Ghirardelli chocolate bars.  Do you see where I’m going here?  It turns out that was just perfect for four batches of fudge, and it came out to an even stick of butter too.  I took it as a sign.

Lesson 2: 

Even if the ingredient proportions come out perfectly, DO NOT take it as a sign to multiply the recipe of fudge by 4.  This is an unbelievably bad idea.  Seriously.

Yes, my original plan was to make just a single batch to see how it turned out and how many jars it would fill.  But it was just too easy to do it all at once.  I didn’t want to have to wait for it to come up to temperature 3 or 4 times.  Once seemed easier. 

So, I melted the butter in my largest sauce pan, a 4-quart pan, I think.  I added the milk, caramel creamer, corn syrup, and sugar, mixed it all together and dumped in the chopped chocolate.  So far, so good.  Then I stirred, and stirred, and stirred, and contemplated crying, then stirred some more.  Rather than the 20 minutes other recipes predicted for the chocolate to reach 235 degrees (soft ball stage), it took over an hour at the recommended medium heat.

My less than scientific theory on this:  Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, so when it gets up close to this temperature, the water starts to evaporate.  Until most of the water has evaporated, the mixture won’t hold more heat.  Once enough water is gone, the temperature starts to climb again, finally reaching the softball stage.  Since I had roughly four times the moisture of the original recipe, I suppose it makes sense that it would take four times as long to evaporate.
 

Lesson 3:

When the original recipe calls for a large sauce pan, and you ignore Lesson 2, use a very, very large pan.  In fact, use a large pot.  Although the mixture didn’t boil over (yet), there were some nerve racking moments after the mixture finally started to boil up over 212 degrees.  Having to lift the pan off the heat every once and a while to let it settle back down probably didn’t help the time it took to reach softball stage.  Who knows what effect it had on the texture.

Having finally reached what my excessively cheap candy thermometer called 235 degrees, I was happy to remove the pan from the heat.  The next direction was to, “let stand, until the pan is no longer hot but still warm (no need to stir here).”

 

Lesson 4:

If you have a recipe that uses a candy thermometer, it should seem strange that other temperatures are defined as simply "still warm".  I found out the hard way that still warm really means 110 degrees.  I also found out that when you have a quadruple batch of something and the pan is still warm, the contents in the center of the pan are still HOT!

I used a hand mixer to start mixing the fudge, but when the pan got too hot to comfortably hold on to, I decided I should wait until it had cooled more.

 

Lesson 5:

When a recipe for fudge says “no need to stir here”, it means DO NOT STIR.  It turns out that stirring fudge before it cools to the proper temperature causes the sugar to re-crystallize at the wrong temperature. 

When I came back to try mixing again, I had a pretty horrible grainy chocolate mess.  It was really terrible.  Stirring did not bring it back to life.  I debated just putting it in jars, but I didn’t want to give something away, at lest to people I know, that didn’t taste good.  I did some reading on Internet posts where I learned that I shouldn’t have stirred the fudge, I should have waited until it reached 110 degrees.  I also found a claim that I could re-cook the fudge to make it smooth again.

Following the instructions, I added water to my fudge, headed back to the stove, and settled in for another hour and a half of heating it back up and evaporating the water before reaching the soft ball stage. 

Lesson 6:

If your pan isn’t big enough the first time, it probably won’t be big enough the second time.  Use a bigger pan.  When my fudge finally started to bubble away toward soft ball stage, it bubbled right out of the pan.  There are still stains on my black, flat-top stove.  I’m going to need to figure out how to get rid of those. 

I switched burners and transferred a bit of the fudge to a bowl.  Once the bowl had cooled a bit, I decided that it really was quite tasty.  My fudge finally reached soft ball stage… again.  This was about 9:00 at night.  Following some of the suggestions I found online, I removed the spoon I had been stirring with, and left the candy thermometer in the chocolate mix.  An hour later, my fudge wasn’t even close to cooling to 110 degrees.

 

 

Lesson 7:

Just give up.  I won’t judge you for failing at fudge.  It happens to the best of us.  Go to bed.  Try not to be so angry at the fudge.  Really, it is for the best.  If you choose to ignore lesson 7, keep reading. 

I went to bed and decided to just see how it looked in the morning.  It was certainly cooler than 110 degrees, and very difficult to stir.  My new online research said not to use a hand mixer, so I took a wooden spoon and started stirring, very slowly.  At this point my husband had said about 100 times that I should give up, but even he took a turn stirring.  I read that it could take up to 20 minutes to stir the fudge so that it no longer has a glossy appearance.  We didn’t last 20 minutes and for a quadruple batch, I was afraid that might mean an hour and 20 minutes. 

 

The mixture was tasty enough, so I decided just to put it in the jars and hope for the best.  I also changed my labels to read “A Dish of Spoon Fudge, or for hot fudge sauce, heat slowly”.  It wasn’t so much the consistency of creamy spoon fudge as stretchy tootsie rolls. 

Lesson 8:

Don’t put the jars of fudge in the fridge.  Remember the hours spent trying to fix the grainy fudge?  Well, after a day or so in the fridge, that grainy texture came right back.  Oh, what a waste of time!  I gave them away anyway.  It was terrible.  I apologize to all of our shower guests.  At least they got a spoon.

 

Lesson 9:

Do not make fudge.

Lesson 10:

You can buy Spoon fudge at http://www.spoonfudge.com/ , already in cute little jars, with a spoon tied to it and everything.