National Fudge Day is observed annually on June 16th. National Fudge Day is a food holiday that allows you to indulge in your favorite flavor of this delicious confectionery. Some of the most familiar fudge flavors are chocolate, chocolate nut, peanut butter, maple and maple nut.
In the late 19th century, some shops on Mackinac Island, Michigan, began to produce similar products as the Vassar College fudge and sold it to summer vacationers. Fudge is still made in some of the original shops located on the famous island.
- The components of fudge are very similar to the traditional recipe for tablet, which is noted in The Household Book of Lady Grisell Baillie (1692-1733). The term “fudge” is often used in the United Kingdom for a softer variant of the tablet recipe.
- American-style fudge (containing chocolate) is found in a letter written by Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
- Hot fudge in the United States and Canada is usually considered to be a chocolate product often used as a topping for ice cream in a heated form, particularly sundaes and parfaits.
- The hot fudge sundae was created in Hollywood. C.C. Brown’s, an iconic ice cream parlor on Hollywood Boulevard, was credited for dreaming up the idea to drizzle melted fudge over ice cream in 1906 (earlier sundaes had other syrups, like cherry). Sadly, the shop closed in 1996, but the treat remains popular.
- It is believed that someone was making caramel when they “fudged” up the recipe. The result was delicious, but the name stuck even as fudge grew in popularity.
- Another story goes, that a college lecturer in Virginia, was teaching a class in toffee making, and the temperature was not taken high enough resulting in what we now know as fudge.
- In 1886, fudge was sold at a local Baltimore grocery store for 40 cents a pound. This is the first known sale of fudge.
- The largest slab of fudge weighed 5,760 lb and was made by Northwest Fudge Factory in Levack, Ontario, Canada, on 23 October 2010.
- Fudge is not very nutritious as it mostly contains large volumes of sugar and a significant portion of fat, although it has a small quantity of manganese and other vitamins and minerals.
- Fudge is commonly presented and sold in the shape of a rectangular block, and is usually available at market stalls or specialty confectionery stores.
- Skuse’s Complete Confectioner was known as a guide for all things dessert—but the first editions of the book, printed in the late 1800s, didn’t include any recipes for fudge. In later editions, they made up for lost time, including recipes for rainbow fudge (food colorings), Mexican fudge (raisins, nuts, and coconut), maple fudge, and three types of chocolate fudge.
- First lady Mamie Eisenhower was a huge fudge fan. She even crafted her own recipe—named Mamie’s Million-Dollar Fudge—which her husband, Ike, quite liked. It included chopped nuts and marshmallow crème.
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