Now that I am getting settled into my new kitchen and back to cooking, I have several things I want to write about. But a funny thing happened to distract me the other night. I made a cake from a mix and had no frosting for it so I set out to make some from scratch. I did not realize a cooked fudge frosting is quite literally fudge. I over cooked the frosting and ended up with some pretty darn good fudge. I started my investigation and here is what I found.

While many of our favorite candy recipes are very old, fudge is a relatively recent invention, probably dating to the 1880s. Fudge is a purely American invention. Some food historians put the date to February 14, 1886, but the precise origin and inventor are in dispute. One of the first written accounts of fudge is in a letter written by Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, a student at Vassar College in New York. She wrote that a schoolmate's cousin made fudge in Baltimore in 1886 and sold it for 40 cents a pound. She got a copy of the recipe and, in 1888, made 30 pounds for a school auction. Word of the confection soon spread to other women's colleges. Wellesley developed its own version of this "original" fudge recipe by adding marshmallows.

It may look simple but, as anyone who has tried to make fudge from one of these old recipes of chocolate, cream, butter and sugar knows, it's a delicate business. As a result, "foolproof" recipes were developed for the home cook that included corn syrup, which produces a smooth final product. Later recipes substituted sweetened condensed milk, marshmallow crème, or other ingredients. These were better guarantees of an easier fudge recipe though not exactly the real thing.

To make this an easier recipe the addition of corn syrup will help a lot.

Combine the sugar and cream and cook over medium heat. When sugar is completely dissolved, add the chocolate. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches soft-ball stage (234°-238°F on a candy thermometer). Remove from heat and add the butter. Cool slightly and mix until fudge starts to thicken and lose its glossy appearance. Transfer to a buttered 8 x 8 pan. Cut into squares before fudge hardens completely.

Additions to try: peanut butter, coarsely chopped nuts, coconut, party mints, butter mints or crushed peanut brittle.