Tremendous Chocolate Fudge

Listen to me. Chocolate fudge. The greatest chocolate fudge ever to leave a kitchen, and it's not close — it's a slaughter, a SILKY chocolate slaughter. I've had the boardwalk fudge they slap around on a marble slab while tourists pretend to be impressed in Cape May. I've had the eight-dollar postage-stamp squares at the Christmas markets. I've had the homemade kind your aunt brings to a gathering on a paper plate sealed with three full yards of plastic wrap. All fine. All fine. None of them are THIS fudge. This is boss fudge. This is the fudge that walks into the party and the other fudges quietly leave through the back.

My grandmother made fudge — and she was a tough woman, the kind of woman who could break up a bar fight with a wooden spoon — and she'd stand over a copper pot for an hour, candy thermometer clipped to the side, mumbling at it like it owed her money. She got 240 degrees Fahrenheit by feel. She got the soft-ball stage by INSTINCT. She made the best fudge in three counties and she also went a little nuts every December. We don't have to do that. We don't have to suffer like that anymore. Times change. Sorry, Grandma.

We're doing the smart fudge. The condensed-milk method. No thermometer, no marble slab, no whispered prayer over a sugar pot — just real bar chocolate (not chips, never chips, chips have stabilizers that FIGHT you), butter, condensed milk, vanilla, a fat pinch of salt, and ten minutes of low-and-slow stirring. Sets in the fridge while you go live your life. Silkier than the old method, more reliable than the old method, BETTER than the old method. Anyone selling you a candy thermometer for this is selling you a problem. It is what it is.

Cut it into thirty-six clean little squares, slide them into a tin, and wait for the moment. The moment WILL come. Somebody drops by. Somebody's had a hard week. Somebody says 'I wish I had something sweet right now.' You produce the tin. They take a square. Their eyes go a little glassy. They look at you differently for the rest of the day. That's the power. Wrap a few up, walk them next door, change the neighborhood one square at a time. It's a beautiful thing.