Fifty Cent Fudge

I am a Yankee. Since I moved to Nashville, I have experienced lots of new Southern traditions. For instance, last night I attended my first Cookie Swap. Now, they probably have Cookie Swaps up North, but I've never heard of one. The concept is simple. Basically a bunch of people (usually women) bake a bunch of cookies and get together to sample and share the cookies that they have made. Sounds simple, right? Well, my first Cookie Swap experience was not quite that simple. 

First of all, I decided to make fudge. All of the other women participating in the Swap are very experienced and accomplished chefs (even the ones who profess otherwise). There was no way that I was even going to try to compete with their cookies - so instead, I made fudge. Now, I have never made fudge before. But my mom makes killer fudge. In fact, it's so good that everyone calls it Million Dollar Fudge. It's my great-grandma's recipe and it is perfection. When we visited my parents for Thanksgiving, I asked my mom if we could make a batch as a trial run for the Cookie Swap. She agreed, and we made fudge. It was easy. It was delicious. As my mom will tell you, "This is a no-fail recipe!" We ate a few pieces that night and then packed the rest up to send home with me. 

My mom agreed to make fudge with me even after cooking and cleaning up  a whole Thanksgiving dinner. She's a good mom. 

So on Monday night, when I planned to make my batch of fudge, I felt nothing but confidence. I had all of the ingredients and the recipe right in front of me. What could be easier than this? In fact, I got a little fancy and made two batches - one with nuts and one without (or as I like to say, a male batch and a female batch). I prepared the fudge and stuck it in the refrigerator to harden. While I didn't taste test the final product that night, I licked the bowl so I knew it was good. 

Fast forward to last night.... The fudge has been sitting in my refrigerator for 72 hours waiting to be cut into small pieces and put into a festive container. When I got home from work, I took the fudge out of the refrigerator and proceeded to attempted to cut it into pieces. However, after 72 hours of sitting in my refrigerator, the fudge, my mom's NO-FAIL fudge, had not hardened. It was a gooey mess - a delicious gooey mess, but still a mess. 

I started to get hot all over and my armpits started to sweat. There was no way that I could take this fudge to the Swap. Instantly, several potential scenarios came to mind.

1. I could stick the fudge in the freezer and hope that it would harden in time.

2. I could make up an excuse not to go. 

3. I could stop by the bakery on the way there and pick up something that was actually edible. 

What I finally ended up doing was packing up the fudge that my mom and I had made the week before. I had just enough pieces left. 

The cookie swap was a success. Our gracious host's home was spectacularly decorated. The confections were divine. No one knew of the drama that had occurred a mere 90 minutes earlier. While I still have my 50¢ fudge in the freezer, I think my mom's Million Dollar Fudge was a hit.