Sometimes you have to fudge a recipe

Full disclosure: I royally screwed up this week’s recipe, but it did still taste wonderful, so I’m sharing it with you anyway.

I made a few missteps on this recipe. One was definitely my fault. The other was lack of direction on behalf of the original author, who is obviously more skilled than I.

The one that was my fault came from my own stubbornness. This recipe calls for mini marshmallows, but not the normal, smaller ones you’d think of as mini marshmallows. No, this recipe wants the teeny-tiny ones you sometimes get in hot chocolate mix.

I hunted around for the tiny marshmallows, and after not being able to find them, I decided I was just going to buy a hot chocolate mix and sift all the tiny marshmallows out of it.

Spoiler alert: it did not go well.

I coated the kitchen counter with chocolate and ended up with brown, powder-covered marshmallows that looked a bit sad on top of my fudge. They did taste good, so there was that, but I’d recommend either leaving them out if you can’t find them or just using the normal mini marshmallows and calling it a day.

The one that wasn’t my fault is the recipe didn’t suggest that you let the first layer of fudge harden before adding the second, and in my haste to finish my project after spending a lot of time sifting marshmallows, I just dumped my second mixture on while the first was still soft and gooey.

This led to me having more of a “swirled” effect with the light and dark layers rather than the pretty separation I was supposed to have.

I sincerely hope you can avoid my pitfalls and have pretty and delicious fudge now that I worked all of the kinks out of it.

If you want to see what the recipe is supposed to look like and find the original recipe, visit the blog “Wonky Wonderful” at https://wonkywonderful.com/hot-chocolate-fudge-recipe/. I haven’t changed the ingredients, but I did change the order of operations to hopefully make your life easier.

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Hot Chocolate Fudge

Ingredients

14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk, divided

1 cup white chocolate chips

2 cups dark chocolate chips

1-1/2 cups mini marshmallows (the super tiny ones)

Directions

Line an eight-by-eight-inch pan with aluminum foil or waxed paper, and grease it with butter or shortening.

In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the white chocolate chips and three tablespoons of the sweetened condensed milk, set aside.

In another microwave-safe bowl, combine the dark chocolate chips and the remaining sweetened condensed milk.

Microwave the dark chocolate chips in 20-second intervals, stirring in between each. Once the chocolate is smooth, pour it into the prepared pan.

Place the pan in the refrigerator for about 20 or 30 minutes or until the dark chocolate layer is hardened.

Microwave the white chocolate chips in 20-second intervals, stirring in between each. Once the chocolate is smooth, spread it over top of the dark chocolate layer.

Evenly distribute the tiny marshmallows over the top of the fudge and press down a little to make them stick into the white chocolate layer.

Refrigerate until firm, remove it from the pan and the foil/waxed paper, and cut into pieces to serve. Store the fudge in an air-tight container. (I’d keep it in the fridge if your house is warm to keep it nice and firm.)

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I did find it ironic that this recipe came from a website called “Wonky Wonderful” after I was finished with it, because while it tasted wonderful, my version certainly looked wonky.

At least now I have a Mason jar full of hot chocolate mix (minus the marshmallows) ready to enjoy for this winter, and ugly or not, you can’t really go wrong with fudge.

Lindsey Young is managing editor of The Clarion, the Kansas Publishing Ventures newspaper in Andale. She can be reached at lindseyclarion@gmail.com.

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