Gravestone Fudge from Molly MacRae #Halloween #recipe #giveaway

Here’s a question you probably haven’t seen on this blog very often: What recipe will you put on your gravestone? I’m not inclined to put one on mine, and I’m willing to bet most of you won’t either. Martha Kathryn “Kay” Kirkham Andrews did, though, and I’m so glad.

Kay Andrews was known, throughout her long life, for her compassion and her wonderful fudge. The two went together; when family and friends needed encouragement, she wrote them a poem and delivered it along with a batch of fudge.  What a sweetheart! She lived to be 97 and asked that her fudge recipe be engraved on her headstone so that she could continue making people happy by sharing the recipe. (The original engraving had a typo, calling for one tablespoon of vanilla. The headstone has since been updated to correct the error.) Fudge is sweet, but even sweeter is the final like on Kay's headstone: “Wherever she goes, there is laughter.”

Rosie Grant, a digital librarian in Washington, D.C, collects and prepares gravestone recipes as a sort of hobby. She’s posted them on her TikTok account @ghostlyarchive. Chantal Larochelle, a graphic designer and photographer, is also into gravestone recipes and has written about the ones she’s photographed on her Cemetery Photography website.

I’m not an experienced fudge maker. I’ve only made it four times. Two were when I was a kid, didn’t know what “softball stage” meant, and didn’t get the mixture hot enough. That put me off fudge making for close to sixty years. Then a friend pointed me to Kay Andrew’s recipe. I got brave and I’ve tried it twice. The first time, I flubbed softball stage again, using a candy thermometer and managing to misread it. Though still too soft, that was closer. The second batch (using a digital thermometer) worked! Sort of. The fudge tastes great but it's grainy. Why? Why? Why?

Today I found a page on Ricardo that explains why by explaining the chemistry behind perfect fudge. My mistake was in stirring the mixture throughout the cooking period and then beating it while it was still hot. That “caused the formation of crystallization nuclei, anchor points to which sugar molecules attach to form crystals.” Oh dear. Kay Andrew did tell me to cool and then beat. I’ll get it right next time.

Kay’s recipe, as written on her headstone, is above in my lovely drawing. To make it easier to make your own perfect fudge (I hope), I’ll list the ingredients first and then the directions.  

Kay’s Fudge

Ingredients

2 sq. chocolate (Baker’s Chocolate squares used to weigh one ounce. Now they weigh half an ounce. I used four squares)

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup milk

3 cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Pinch of salt

 

Directions

Line an 8” x 8” pan with parchment paper and have all ingredients ready.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt chocolate and butter over low heat, stirring. When melted, stir in the milk, sugar, and salt. Stir until sugar is dissolved.

Let mixture come to a boil over medium-low—without stirring. Continue cooking over medium-low until the mixture has reached 234℉ (the softball stage. You’ll find good, clear instructions for how to test softball stage on that same helpful page on Ricardo.)

Remove from heat and let cool—without stirring—to 109-113℉. You can hasten the cooling by putting the pan in sink of cold water. Don’t use ice water because the outer edges will cool too quickly while the middle stays hot.

When cool, beat the mixture continually until it visibly thickens and loses a bit of its luster, 5 to 15 minutes.

Pour into prepared pan, allow to cool completely and, as Kay Andrews tells us, eat. 

 Readers, what recipe would you put on your gravestone? Answer in a comment, with your email address, for your randomly chosen chance to win your choice of a book in my Haunted Yarn Shop mystery series. I'll choose the winner on Halloween. 

 

Look for Molly’s new series—the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries—coming in July 2024!

Book 1: Come Shell or High Water

And in the meantime, you can enjoy her other books. 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.