Aunt Carole's Fudge

My Aunt Carole, my dad's sister, has always made fudge at Christmas. I can remember it all the way back to my little girl days. She would always give it out as gifts at her Christmas Eve party that she had for years and years. We all grew up eating it and loving it. I'm sure her girls can make it too but tonight I made it for the first time and it came out just right! This stuff isn't easy to make I don't think. You cook the sugar, cocoa, milk and salt to soft ball stage. I can just picture Aunt Carole dropping some of that hot syrup in a cup of water to check it. At least I took that guess work out by using a candy thermometer. Then after it's at soft ball you add the vanilla, butter and nuts and she puts the pot in cold water to cool it down faster so I did that. Then you start stirring and you stir and stir and you think "is it time to pour it? is it time to pour it" stir some more, stir some more "oh no, is it time, it's getting stiff, have I stirred it enough? oh no, do I pour it now? eeeekkkkkkk, I need to pour it now and boom, it's hard. The end. Very stressful making fudge. I need to eat the whole batch now to manage the stress. Check back with me in 44 years and I bet I have it down like AC does.:)

Aunt Carole put the recipe in our wedding cookbook that friends and family contributed to. She told me a couple of years ago that her famous, double secret family fudge recipe was the one on the Hershey's Cocoa can.:)

Here's the buttered platter I poured it out on. I remember Aunt Carole buttering her platters getting ready to make fudge.

And the pot with all the stuff that got too hard to make it out. AC always scraped that stuff and kept it in a bag and we all would get handfulls of the crumbs to eat!

This all started when I asked Paul to bring me some sugar the other day and he got a 10 lb bag. It's his fault I am now in to making fudge. He really likes it so that's good. Hey, it's Christmas!