A Snowbird in Paradise

Photo treated with a Photoshop Action to age it.

This all started the day after Thanksgiving this year when my daughter called me and asked for my aunt's pumpkin pie recipe.  Well, it HAS to be right here.  I searched the recipe books stored over the microwave...nope.  I started opening pantry doors and found a stack of older recipe books I had stashed there, oh, maybe a year or more ago but none of the old recipes were there.  I searched all day with no success, although I found a lot of other collections.

The next day I was getting out the craft materials, keeping an eye out for something that COULD be recipes.  There was a clear plastic bag...it looked like a bunch of random pieces of paper.  It was the whole collection of old recipes I had put in with some recipe-by-mail program MANY years ago.  I thought they were still all in the plastic box but now I remember that the box broke and I shoved the contents into this bag and hid it in the closet because I was too busy to deal with it.

Well, the pumpkin pie recipe was not there but I found it on the Internet.  It used Dream Whip so I knew that site would have the recipe.

What I found instead was my mother's fudge recipe.  I have never had any other fudge that comes close...I was raised with THIS fudge and anything else is counterfeit in my mind.  I can so clearly remember making this fudge with my mother and, indeed, that is exactly why I felt the need to start cooking with my granddaughters.  If you did not make this at the knee of someone who has made it before you will end up with something less than the REAL fudge.  So when it was my younger granddaughter's "Special Day with Grandma" we set about making Grandma's fudge.

Oh, the original recipe was in my mother's high school home economics text book.  I really can't imagine teaching a whole class of young ladies this recipe...especially a room full of 1920s flappers.


Combine sugar, cocoa and milk in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil stirring constantly.  Cook slowly while stirring until mixture lumps when a bit is dripped into cold water.  (this could take the better part of an hour).  Add butter, vanilla and salt.  When butter melts, beat until a shine appears and fudge is thickening.  Then pour quickly into a greased 9" by 9" pan.  Cool, score, and serve.

Mother's 1920s high school fudge recipe