All Night Fudge-athon!

The title alone has the makings of a very bad porn flick. But I had a very different fudge experience tonight. I am now resting from a marathon of fudge making. Vanilla fudge. Chocolate fudge. Eight fucking pounds of quick nut fudge! Er, without the nuts, that is. I hate nuts in my fudge.

The fudge in question is for twenty-five of my co-workers, with whom I went in on a Cookie Swap. Yummmm, I spend two hours making fudge and get LOTS of free cookies in exchange! Of course, I have to share my fudge, too. With twenty-five other people. At least I'm not the one who took it upon herself to organize it - God help her with this Herculean task!

The recipes I used come from Bawlmer staple Domino's Sugar. Now, unlike that insipid Brown Sugar Microwave Fudge Toffee recipe from the other night, I was quite familiar with this fudge recipe, and had made it several times in the past. Domino's has a no-fail quick chocolate fudge that requires no candy thermometer whatsoever, at all. I hate fooling with those things, and have no patience for 'em. So this is an ideal one for me - just dump some confectioner's sugar, cocoa, butter, vanilla and milk (and a wee bit o' salt) into a pot, melt and stir over low heat, pour into a loaf pan and refrigerate it. Cut it and you have some tasty, if a little grainy, fudge. Ours has always been a little thin in the pan, but that's only because we never bother with a loaf pan and instead put it in a wide square cake pan.

I decided this would be my Cookie Swap contribution (hell, they're fine with it, why not?) and bought everything tonight, after much, much work this past week for work and some graduate classes I am taking. I made 8 pounds of fudge, in shifts of two batches at a time. For a change, I decided to layer chocolate and vanilla fudge - the latter I have never made - and set to work. I ate some of the delicious fudge off the spoon between batches (no, I didn't double dip), and had to hurry because this stuff hardens pretty fast.

I finally have filled 5 containers with layers of chocolate and vanilla fudge, which are currently sitting in my car. This is because there is no room in my fridge, and since it'll be cold as a fridge outside I think they should be nice and cold in the car. I just have to remember to take them out and cut them up before I leave for work!

Well, I am done making fudge, I think, for a very long time, but it was worth it. With enough for three pieces for everyone plus more for my chocoholic mother and sisters (father? Not so chocoholic), I should have enough to last me a while.

But strangely, I never want to see another piece of fudge again! This was kind of tiring.