What did I do wrong?
I go through the steps again in my head. Maybe I should've sifted the cocoa. There was some raw sugar mixed in with the granulated sugar - could that have something to do with it? Was there enough liquid? A cup and a half of condensed milk hardly seemed like enough once I mixed it all together. Maybe the heat was turned up too high. Maybe I didn't stir it enough. Maybe I stirred it too much.
Regardless of what I did, I now have a pot of grainy chocolate sludge resting on the stove, a wooden spoon standing straight up in the center of the mass, mocking me.
I dump it, leave the kitchen, and come back a couple hours later, bolstered by Sous Chef's presence. I get out the ingredients again. The 40's station on SiriusXM plays "String of Pearls" - one of Grandma's favorite songs - it's as if she's telling me, "Damn straight you're going to try again."
This time around, it's even worse. I'm left with a crumbly mass that Sous Chef has to literally dig out of the pan, shirtsleeves rolled up, a sheen of sweat on his forehead by the time it's over. I poor myself some bourbon, avoiding eye contact.
The square dish I lightly buttered at the beginning of the day, hours ago, still sits on the counter, eternally waiting for the final step of the recipe - the Cooling. It's so sad, sitting there by itself. It's Miss Havisham in her decaying wedding dress.
It's official. I suck at making fudge.
My grandma used to make fudge; she'd mail it to us, almost magically it seemed, all the way across the country. I got so excited when that package arrived at the door, my name written in her familiar script. Oh, how I loved opening up the box, peeling back the wax paper, inhaling the cocoa and sugar and fat.
It's her recipe that I managed to mangle into oblivion today. She passed it down to me a few years ago when I visited her and we had a fudge-making lesson.
The fudge didn't turn out that day, either.
She was nice about it; she said fudge can be tricky. It had something to do with the humidity in the air. I intuited that she was sparing my feelings, that she knew exactly what we did wrong. But she kept her lips sealed.
That was the thing about Grandma - despite the fact that she was a no-nonsense, hard as nails kind of woman, she wasn't malicious. She knew when to reel it in and let someone down nicely.
When I was thirteen and puberty and a lifelong diet of Twinkies were combining in a softening midsection, Grandma looked at me and said, "It's fine - it's just baby fat." Desperate as I was for an excuse, even I could tell she was just being nice.
I wonder what she would say about today's kitchen fail. She'd probably wave it off, say something about the weather, and move on to her scratch-off lottery tickets. Grandma was serious about three things: fudge, gambling, and manners.
Grandma passed away a few days ago. I'm really going to miss her.
I'll figure out the fudge...one day. In the meantime, I'm letting the cats lick the pan. Might as well put that butter to some sort of use. Dolce's face pretty much sums up the day:
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