FUDDDDDDGE!

In honor of all the cookie house and candy days of our past Decembers, we spent today making fudge. We have about twenty pounds cooling in various places---atop tuna cans on the glass-topped dining table, set on the cool of the kitchen counter, the first already firm and cool, resting on the glass in a 9x13 steel pan.

All the rest is in the small loaf pans, and those little things are HEAVY!! They should be about 1 1/4 pounds apiece, since the recipe usually yields five pounds, and we usually filled four with each making.

The wide pan is the original recipe, with about a pound of chocolate stirred in with the marshmallow creme; one set of loaf pans is Dark, with two pounds in the mix, and the Reese's, which took two makings (original and peanut butter) and two pours.

There's one loaf pan of solid PB Fudge, top scattered with big salted peanuts, for my DDIL, whose favorite candy it is.

And one loaf pan of the chocolate meant for the Reese's, but somehow we had more chocolate than PB. Or we poured it wrong. Who cares. Chris has one client who has been hinting and then downright ASKING, if it's about time for fudge. And we don't think he even takes it home, just keeps it at the office so he won't have to share.

Tomorrow will be pretzel-dip day, and Rocky-Road Day, and maybe haystacks and Cherry clusters and peanut clusters and maybe Chex mix.

But if I don't get upstairs and get those guest rooms ready, there'll be only half of us here to eat it. But making sweet stuff is ever so much more FUNNN.

And no matter how much I try, knowing the guest beds have soft, fluffy fresh white linens all tucked and smoothed just won't calm that midnight craving for CHOCOLATE.