What the Fudge

Monday morning I received an email from the human resource manager at our school. The subject was "OVEN". My heart skipped a beat and I quickly opened it. Here is what it said, "Good morning Leanne, I hope you had a great weekend. The oven technician just called me this morning to go to your apartment, I´m so sorry.  I think is better to contact a particular technician to fix the oven, I will let you know. See you later and have a nice day."

To most of you this means nothing so let me explain. The entire time I've been in Colombia my oven has been broken. It heats up to the right temperature and then turns off. About 2 months ago I pursued a way to get it fixed. Since that time the technician "is going to come" on three different occasions. Each time I was asked to stay in my apartment from 8:00 until 12:00 on a Saturday morning and wait for him to show up. Each time I was sorely disappointed when nothing happened. I don't really mind having to sit at home all morning, what makes me sad is that my oven still doesn't work.  I love love love to bake and my sweet skills are smoldering inside me without an oven to release them.

Last night this smoldering desire erupted and I decided to try my hand at making homemade fudge. Why fudge? Well, it doesn't need an oven! Little did I know the task ahead of me.

It started off pretty well: put sugar, milk and cocoa in a pan and bring to a boil. At this point I had my apron on and I was dancing to Christmas music. Next, the recipe told me when the mixture started to boil to stop stirring, reduce heat and maintain it there until a drop of the mixture in cold water would form a solid ball that I can squish between my fingers. What the heck.  I heated and tested, heated and tested, heated and tested. I began to think I had done something wrong. After 10 failed attempts to "form a ball" I decided I should probably change the muddy-looking water. I changed the water and then voila! when I dripped the liquid into the cold water a ball formed! Score.

Now is when it starts going downhill. I took the pre-fudge off the stove and the next step was to add butter and vanilla and beat with a wooden spoon until it lost its sheen. What does that even mean. Loses its sheen? I decided I'd just stir until it changed appearance. So I stirred and stirred. And stirred some more and kept on going. My left arm eventually became sore. I switched arms and kept going and going. After nearly 15 minutes of stirring it started to solidfy and like magic it became dull looking. Yes! Score. Now where does the downhill part come in?

Well, the next part was dumping the fudge into a pre-greased pan to cool. I got 75% of it into greased pan and decided I needed a spatula to get every last drop of chocolatey goodness from the original pot. My only problem was that I couldn't reach the drawer to get the spatula. So with my left hand stabling the pan on the stove I stretched and stretched to the drawer. Nope. Still couldn't reach. Here we go Leanne, you got this. I slid over more...a little more....a little more....CRASH! I had slid a little too far and my pan of hot fudge toppled to the floor. Of course it landed upside down. I quickly flipped and and decided to salvage as much fudge as possible. My immediate thought was: hands, scoop, pan. Thankfully reason took charge before impulse: million degree sugar mixture = burn. Next reaction, spatula! Yeah yeah yeah! Let's salvage as much as I can. I mean I just swept the floor yesterday? Yeah. No big deal.

 In the midst of my brain going crazy my cat's brain was doing the same. She came charging in and decided to take control of the situation. Her solution? Let's stick my head in this and use my tongue as a scoop. Not to scoop into the pan, but into my stomach. Get. In. My. Belly. Ahh! No. No. No. Cats should not eat chocolate. With my gooey fingers I scooped Amiguita up, threw her in my bedroom and shut the door.  So not only did I dump the fudge pan I also put my cat at risk of death. Great Leanne. Score.

Then I stopped. Looked at the floor, considered my situation, realized Christmas music was still playing in the background and just started giggling. Really. Is this real life? Of course this happened.  Still giggling I manged to clean up the rest of my mess. It's the journey that we're supposed to enjoy right? Not the final destination? Yeah, I'll go for that.

I'm thinking more and more every day that this oven situation needs to be fixed.