I have been having another go at making fudge.
I have not bothered with this activity for ages in the wake of the disaster for which I have now decided to pardon the Scots and their misleading online claims, mostly thanks to the lovely Caledonian hotel and their generous distribution of champagne, which shows that there must be some good eggs in there. Obviously I am speaking metaphorically about people in Scotland, not real eggs in fudge which is not made with eggs as I am sure you know.
I like fudge, it is good for the waistline, and yesterday I discovered a recipe in my favourite book of Chocolate Recipes For Fat People that seemed to be reasonably simple and also had in it lots of things that I liked the sound of, like chocolate.
Hence this morning I tipped everything into a pan and made fudge, which I poured into a dish and left in the fridge to set. I was really, really careful to make sure I had followed the instructions to the absolute letter, in order that any disasters could be laid squarely at the door of the authors and not my responsibility. I am not usually very good at this as almost all recipes can be improved by adding cream or red wine to them, and most writers of recipes leave these things out or only add them in ridiculously small quantities.
Actually I did add just the tiniest bit of cream because it needed using up, and because fudge ought to have cream in, but apart from that, which probably won’t make much difference, I really did follow the instructions to the letter.
It hasn’t worked yet.
It is still sitting stickily in the fridge.
I have, of course, sampled it, and can confirm that it tastes very splendid indeed, but it does seem to be very sticky.
I shall have to roll it into balls tomorrow and dump them in cocoa or nuts or something.
I am beginning to feel very grave doubts about the responsibility of recipe writers. They are great repositories of public trust and should behave as such. It is important that I, as a member of the public, can feel confidence in these important institutions. If I were to have a political campaign it would be for appropriate penalties to be applied to people who write misleading and falsified recipes. Beheading, perhaps.
After that I went upstairs and spent an hour on the telephone to the people who run this website. By run it, I mean people who are at the coal face of understanding things like DNS and megabits and coding. Apart from them, obviously I run it, in the same sort of way that the Government runs the NHS, in that I haven’t got a clue how it actually keeps getting delivered to you every day, is far more complicated than I could possibly begin to investigate, seems to involve an awful lot of layers of activity and people doing things, and it costs me a lot of money.
In the end they explained that the problem with the pictures is down to something that has gone wrong at their end called a fatal Imagik Error and that it is a problem which will be fixed in a few days, and all I will have to do is download the upgrade when they send it to me and all will be well. In the end they have helpfully messed about with the website until I can put pictures in the library of pictures, even though only I can see them, and also sent me a picture of a koala bear to get me started.
They were all very nice and helpful, it was very peculiar talking to somebody who was looking at all the secret backstage bits of my website that don’t go on the final page, all of the draft paragraphs and rows of pictures and bits I have rejected or saved in case they come in handy: a bit like having a visit to a gynaecologist, odd and rather uncomfortably personal.
Since I was in front of the computer anyway I thought I would have a go at my tax return.
As we say in the trade, that’s another story.
