Daddy was the best cook and baker. He had learned these skills from his mother. He often told me stories about when he was a young boy, and how his mother would cook and bake for him and his friends . . . Even in the middle of the night.
One of Daddy’s specialties was making fudge. It was the best treat I had ever had or could imagine this side of heaven. I loved to watch Daddy create in the kitchen, and sometimes he would let me help. As he stood by the big pressure cooker pot on the stove, he would list off things for me to bring him. . . Sugar, cocoa, peanut butter . . . Just to name a few. Always last on Daddy’s list was a little coffee cup of cold water. As Daddy began to swirl the ingredients together in the big pot, he would change the temp of the burner up and down to make the heat just right. The air would begin to fill with the wonderful smells of chocolate and sugar . . . Then Daddy would always let me watch as he dropped the stick butter into the thick chocolate. I loved to watch it swirl around as it melted and made the chocolate as smooth looking as glass. Then, at just the right moment, when the chocolate mixture began to bloop bubbles up from the middle, and then all over, Daddy would set the timer on the stove, and began to beat the fudge with his big spoon, so it would fully mix and harden just right. While he was doing this, Daddy would instruct me to get the “fudge pan” and a stick of butter. With his careful guidance I would peel the paper off of the stick, just enough to expose one end, then I would “color” the pan’s bottom yellow with the stick, till every corner was completely coated. This would help the fudge not to stick to the pan, and make it easier to cut and serve later.
Then would come “the moment of truth” as Daddy called it, and he would take the big spoon, and drop a little chocolaty drop into the cup of cold water. We both would look carefully. If it held its shape, then the fudge was done, and would harden nicely in the pan. If it spread out in the cup, then it was not done, and Daddy would have to beat it more. He would repeat this process till the little drop was a perfect little ball in the water.
When the fudge was ready, he would pick up the large pot, hold it over the buttered fudge pan, and let the smooth chocolaty goodness pour out in thick waves. Taking his big spoon, he would scrape out every little bit he could, and then with the spoon’s back, he smoothed the fudge in the pan till it filled every corner and it’s top was as flat as a table.
While the fudge sat and cooled, Daddy would announce, “Who wants to scrape the pan? . . . Who wants to scrape the spoon? . . . And my brothers and sister would come running. Daddy would then make the decision as to who got what. Sometimes, though, he wouldn’t make the announcement and he and I would take two small spoons and scrape the pot clean, then he would give me the big spoon to eat off of. When the others would come around the corner, asking if it was done yet, he’d glance my way and give me a wink, as I sat at the table finishing off the last of the big spoon, and say, “I wasn’t quite sure of it tonight, so I had to have it specially taste - tested to see if it was alright” . . . The others knew that this meant that they were out of luck till the pan was ready, and I happily smiled sitting at the table with my feet swinging back and forth in my chair as I held the big spoon tight with both hands.
Over the years, we had good times and bad times. Times when everything seemed to go right, and many times that seemed too hard to bear. Even so, we could always count on three things . . . God’s Care, our Parents’ Love, and Daddy’s Fudge. Even when the cupboards were mostly bare, we always had just enough for Daddy to make his fudge for us. In later years, when my siblings had moved on with their own families, we would all gather together for special family game nights. We would sit on the floor around the coffee table, or at the big dinning room table and play Monopoly with Mom, while Daddy would make popcorn and his special fudge. . . One night, though, things didn’t go as planned and the fudge was taking much, much longer to fix than normal. No matter what Daddy did, he couldn’t get the fudge to make the little ball in the cup of water, and the fudge would not harden. Finally, after his face was beet red, with sweat drops running down his forehead, he sat the pan down on a cold burner, and declared it a failure. Everyone jumped up and got spoons and began to eat the delicious soft fudge right out of the pan! It didn’t turn out as he had planned or hoped, but it was just as wonderful tasting as always. We cleaned the pot!
This spoke to Daddy, and as he often used his life experiences, he told of this particular fudge batch in a sermon illustration. It was a while before Daddy made fudge again, but the next family game night, Mom secretly handed each of us a spoon, so at the right time, we could all hold our spoons up in our fists on the table all at once. This was Momma’s way of teasing Daddy, but as I ran up and gave him a big hug, he realized that no matter how his fudge turned out, we all wanted to eat it . . . It was just that good!!! That night the fudge turned out perfectly, and because of my hug, Daddy gave me both the big pot and the big spoon, to enjoy by myself.
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As an adult, I had a friend that wanted to take me to a little area of specialty gift shops for a lady’s day out. We looked at antiques, and crafts, and window shopped for hours. We were just about to leave when I spotted something in one of the Old Fashioned Candy Makers’ Windows . . . It was a beautiful display of different colored spoons, all neatly wrapped with a little clear wrap and bow . . . In the spoon? FUDGE! What was the cost for a “spoon full of fudge"? . . . $6.00. What would Daddy have thought?!
