Mint-Chocolate Fudge: or, Revisiting my forgotten favorites

 When it gets cold, I want to make candy. If puddles crack under one's bicycle tire instead of splashing, you will find me traversing town in search of the last store that's open late and sells shelled raw peanuts to make peanut brittle. (I should note that I don't like peanut brittle if the temperature is above freezing.) But during the latest cold snap, I wanted to revisit one of the reasons I passed all my classes in high school:

Mint-Chocolate Fudge ⅓ c butter 2½ c sugar ½ tsp salt 1 (5-oz) can evaporated milk 1 (7-oz) jar marshmallow creme 1 (12-oz) package semisweet chocolate chips 1 (12-oz) package white chocolate chips 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp mint extract 3-5 drops green food coloring Divide all ingredients in half except the mint extract, vanilla, marshmallow creme, and food coloring. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan. In a small saucepan, cook half the butter, half the sugar, half the milk, and half the salt to the firm-ball stage over medium-high heat. Stir and scrape the bottom of the pot constantly. Remove from heat. Quickly scoop half the marshmallow creme into the pot (just eyeball it, no need to be precise). Dump in half the white chocolate chips, the mint extract, and the green food coloring. Beat well until thoroughly mixed and creamy. Add more food coloring if desired. Drop splats of the fudge all over the pan, and then spread them even. (If you just pour the fudge into the center of the pan, it will be annoyingly tricky to coax it all the way to the edges.) In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the white chocolate by cooking it for 20 seconds at a time, stirring very well after each cooking interval. Drizzle and pour it all over the top of the fudge, and then spread it out to thoroughly cover. Set the pan aside. Give the saucepan a quick rinse, then put the remaining milk, sugar, butter, and salt in it. Cook it to the firm-ball stage as before. Add the remaining marshmallow creme, the vanilla, and half the semisweet chips. Beat until smooth and creamy. Spoon the chocolate fudge all over the mint fudge in the pan (the white chocolate should still be melted). Spread the fudge as evenly as possible (don't bother with perfection, it's really hard). Place the remaining semisweet chips into the bowl you used to melt the white chocolate. Cook it for 15 seconds at a time, stirring well after each interval. (You don't need to bother rinsing the bowl- just let any remaining white chocolate get mixed in.) Spoon the melted chocolate all over the fudge. Then spread it to evenly cover. If you can't get the chocolate perfectly smooth on top, just make nice-looking swirls instead. Let the pan cool for several hours at room temperature before cutting. Adapted from the chocolate fudge recipe on the back of marshmallow cream jars

You may recognize this as a revision of Fantasy Fudge (also known as the recipe that's been on the back of marshmallow creme jars for decades- and also as my great-grandmother's recipe). This version of the original recipe involves a lot more pots and bowls than if one were to sensibly make single-layer chocolate fudge. But if you have a dishwasher, it's so worth it. 

When I was in high school and thought the height of classy restaurants was a bowl of Andes bars next to the "please wait to be seated" sign, I decided to let those little candies inspire this multilayered creation.  I easily figured out that by using white chocolate chips instead of semisweet, one can make fudge in any flavor you like. After years of only knowing fudge in one flavor, suddenly the entire supermarket shelf of flavorings and extracts lay before me. I still haven't worked up the nerve to venture beyond mint extract. 

It always feels... incorrect to make off-white fudge. Those two drops of artificial coloring make this seem so much more natural.

The first time I made this fudge, the two layers never stuck together. Imagine serving a layer cake with no icing in the middle to hold it together. This brings us to the big revision/correction I made to the recipe the second time I made this: melting the other half of the white chocolate chip bag and spreading it over everything. You don't need to worry about any crumbs marring the white appearance since you'll be covering it with more fudge anyway.

And so, with part one of the recipe finished, we can move on to part two: fudge as we all know it! You may think that we could make this more efficient by boiling up one big pot of fudge, and then putting white chips in one half of it and semisweet chips in the other. I tried that. The bottom layer turned out just fine. However, while the other half of the boiled mixture sat in the pot and waited, it turned gritty. I had to put it back on the stove to get rid of the sandy grains, all the while trying not to scorch it. No time was saved. You really do need to make each layer of fudge one at a time. Also, when the fudge is ready to put into the pan, drop it in little splats all over the surface. It's so much easier to coax the fudge into an even layer than if you dumped it all in the middle of the pan.

Yes, it's supposed to look like this. All will be well.

After I started putting white chocolate in the middle to hold the candy together, it only made sense to do the same with the extra semisweet chocolate. Looking at the recipe now, after such a long time since I last made it, the swirled chocolate topping is the most dated part of it. You see, in the pre-Pinterest days of cake decorating when long metal icing spatulas were still exotic kitchen items, we didn't have semiprofessional arsenals of icing art supplies. So, one of the most common ways to ice a cake was to just push the icing in swirls all over it. This had the advantage of being feasible with the cutlery you already had in the drawer, and also made the icing look enticingly creamy with those lovely swirly patterns. These days, it seems we all try to our damnedest to get the cake icing perfectly smooth on the top and sides. The icing is less a finishing touch and more of a blank canvas for you to try to follow along with an allegedly easy cake-decking tutorial. But when I first iced a batch of mint-chocolate fudge like the way everyone did cakes at the time, they still looked something like this.

Anyway, after making the first batch of this fudge in a long time, I realized that this makes a lot of fudge. I haven't made an entire 9x13 pan of fudge in ages. Back when I made this all the time, I gave it to my high schoolteachers to bribe up my grades, brought it to social gatherings, made it with friends, and basically never made this without people around to give it to. 

But since we're avoiding holiday obligations this year, we had an entire pan of fudge threatening our ability to fit into last winter's pants. Which brings me to my next point: this recipe is great for gift-giving! Look at how cute they are on a plate!

In a desperate bid to banish these delicious calories from the house, I attempted to bring a plate of candy to the neighbors on each side of the house. It's considered normal(ish) to bring surprise baked goods to your neighbors. The holiday is the perfect excuse to save the wreckage of my pre-pandemic figure from my own cooking. Note that I said I attempted to give these away. Only one neighbor was at home to receive my generosity, and we ate the other plate before I could get it out of the house.

One other person in the house, with a very large piece of fudge in one hand, said "Yeah I can see how you saved your grades with this." And I really did that in high school. After I accepted that I just couldn't choke down busywork night after night, I ended up passing multiple classes by bringing this very fudge with a hopeful look on my face and some unsubtle inquiries about whether my grade might get nudged up a bit. 

And so, in closing, this may be a bit more dish-demanding than a lot of other recipes, but it is so, so good.