Grandma’s No-Fuss Fudge Recipe Created a Ruckus When Time Came to Cook

We’re going to start the new year off by cleaning up the old-year mess we created--judging from the letters and phone calls--in many Orange County kitchens.

The Grandma’s No-Fuss Cashew Fudge recipe we carried several weeks ago turned out to be star-crossed indeed. First, we inadvertently omitted a key direction (to melt the butter and chocolate by pouring boiling syrup over it), something we corrected two days later.

Then we began receiving calls from readers who seemed most rankled at the line in the article that said anyone who “could boil water or plug in a mixer,” including a 10-year-old of our acquaintance, could make the fudge with ease. It seems they could not.

“I can boil water and I can use an electric mixer,” fumed June Drury, “but what a mess I got into trying to make Granny’s fudge!”

Toba V. Wheeler of Irvine agreed. “As I was stirring and stirring and stirring, . . . I wondered how on earth a 10-year-old could possibly have the strength and stamina to perform the chore--I was exhausted before I even put the pan on the stove.”

She wound up with “a bowlful of granulated sugar globs and hard sugar lumps and these, too, started flying out of the (mixer) bowl and all over the counter, walls, floor, hands and blouse.”

“That was the final straw and I gave up,” she said.

We were, if possible, more perplexed than they. It is, after all, an old family recipe--tested and proved through several generations of use.

But both Wheeler and Drury hit on the problem in their respective letters.

“I have made tons of fudge, but . . . I thought this (recipe) was special since it called for condensed milk, instead of evaporated milk,” Drury said.

Wrote Wheeler: “ . . . There is no way 4 1/2 cups of sugar could dissolve in 12 ounces of condensed milk.”

That, indeed, was the wrinkle. The ingredients should have read evaporated milk, not condensed. So we are reprinting the corrected recipe this week, with apologies to those who wrote or called and also those who didn’t. And to those whose smoke alarms were activated by neighbors laboring over Grandma’s no-fuss fudge.

We also managed to ruffle a few other feathers during the holidays by not telling readers where they could purchase a key ingredient--plums and tapioca--in the sugarplum cake recipe published the week before Christmas. The answer: in the junior baby foods section of any supermarket.

Other than these two omissions, Guys & Galleys enjoyed an interesting and positive year.

The guys who shared their recipes during 1988--and the recipes themselves--mirrored the county’s remarkable social, economic and ethnic diversity.

The contributors ranged from an unemployed construction worker to a master of high finance. Scattered in between were several attorneys, a punk rock musician, a publicist, a couple of retirees, a bartender, a psychologist, a comedian and a doctor, among others.

Their recipes also ran the gamut, from French and Italian to German and Oriental, from Mexican to Spanish (there’s a big difference), from Mideastern to Midwestern.

We nibbled on buffalo wings with a bartender in San Juan Capistrano and sampled barbecued fish aboard an advertising executive’s yacht in Newport Harbor. We also strolled with an author-musician-therapist through his herb garden in Corona del Mar and slurped clam chowder brewed on the beach by a band of lifeguards in Laguna Beach.

We thank them all for sharing their recipes and for taking the time to prepare the dishes for our photographers.

Now it’s time to rustle up some cooks for the new year. If you are a guy who likes to cook--or know one--drop us a line at Guys & Galleys, Orange County Life, The Times, 1365 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626.

THE CORRECTED GRANDMA’S NO-FUSS CASHEW FUDGE

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups sugar

1 twelve-ounce can evaporated milk

12 one-ounce squares bittersweet chocolate

1/2 pound butter

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon vanilla, brandy or rum

1/2 pound cashew pieces

Preparation

In a large heavy saucepan, mix sugar and evaporated milk. Sprinkle on 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix again and slowly bring mixture to bubbling boil. Immediately reduce heat and simmer for 14 minutes, stirring frequently. While sugar-milk mixture is cooking, break chocolate pieces in half, place in large mixing bowl and add butter in chunks. Sprinkle on remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. Remove sugar-milk mixture from heat and pour over butter and chocolate. Blend with electric mixer on low. Increase speed of mixer to high and beat for 10 minutes. Add vanilla, rum or brandy and nuts. Mix with spoon and spread in buttered pans. Chill several hours.