The One Where I Impart Some of My (Limited) Cooking Talent

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I am not what you'd call "culinarily inclined". I don't particularly enjoy cooking. I do enjoy eating good food and do enjoy sitting in the kitchen, drinking wine, keeping other people company while they are cooking. If something is easy, I don't mind doing it, but I am much better at mixing cocktails and pulling together a tasty compliment of hors d'oeuvres than whipping up a meal. (My true calling is in ordering good food; hence my profession in event planning.)

When I was in high school, we had a really tough chemistry teacher who used to set an assignment every year that the students would have to make fudge (as in chocolate fudge) at home, write up a report of their observations while making it, and then submit both for a grade. Now the point of this was to observe boiling point, pressure, and a bunch of other things I don't remember.

One of the warnings she gave was not to make the fudge on a rainy or overcast day. The assignment was set in the winter. In New England. Fine days were hard to come by. Even with the help of my mother, I made three terribly grainy batches of fudge, but I DID observe how the boiling point was affected by the lower pressure. While I knew that my paper would be okay, I knew that if I turned in a bad batch of fudge, my grade was going to get hammered, and this teacher was very reluctant to give high grades.

Our Latin teacher, who was a caterer on the side and who knew that we were all having a difficult time in chemistry, gave those of us in Latin III a sure fire fudge recipe that didn't involve boiling sugar. It is SUPER EASY and DELICIOUS, and I am passing this recipe on to you today. I just made some to bring to Sister K's for Thanksgiving.

Mr. McCreesh's Super Easy Fudge

• 2 cups of chocolate chips (or 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup of peanut butter chips)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla (I omit when using chocolate AND peanut butter chips)
• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk (I made this with the light kind recently, and I didn't notice a difference in the taste.)
• 1 brownie pan, greased (you can use butter or non-stick cooking spray - guess which one tastes better?)

Heat the condensed milk in a double boiler until it is really runny. (I don't have a double boiler so I use a metal bowl fitted into a pan of boiling water. Same difference.) Stir in tthe 2 cups of chips until they are fully melted into the condensed milk and the mixture starts to thicken. Quickly transfer the soft fudge into the brownie pan and spread it out in the pan to set. You can top the fudge with decorative whole nuts or you can add chopped nuts to the mixture itself. (I prefer it plain.)

(This time, I pre-lined my pan with aluminum foil for easy traveling, but it made things a bit messy. I wouldn't do that again.)
I think that my project got a "B" from the really tough teacher. From my dad, it got an "A++". I think that he will be pleased when he sees that I made this for him!