It was a Fudge Fail.

Jacob has never been as excited about going to school as he was today.  He wore a Christmas hat, could barely go to sleep last night and has talked for two days about how today was going to be the “best day of school EVER”.  It’s all because a teacher who pulls he and some friends out each week to work with Jacob on reading is throwing a Christmas party during today’s session.  They are going to have hot chocolate … that’s all I know.  That and that he is beside himself excited.

So, I sent a small gift to the teacher with him and thought I’d add some fudge to go along with it.  Brittany had been telling me for days that she was “craving fudge” so when I saw the evaporated milk and marshmallow cream at the store yesterday I grabbed it up.  There was a recipe right on the back for FOOLPROOF fudge.

Except, as it turned out,  it was “not so foolproof” fudge.  Or maybe … “foolproof for everyone but Darla” fudge.

It looked like this:

Basically it was chocolate soup.  The kids did stick their fingers in it (AT BREAKFAST) and said it was good … nothing like sugaring them up right before school, huh?  Brittany suggested we freeze it and make frozen hot chocolate but truly it sat in the fridge all night and was still soupy so I’m not confident that the freezer attempt would work.  I might put it back in the pan and try to cook it longer.  I mean really, how much worse can it get?!?

I should probably know better than to ask that question!

I even heard Jacob mumble this morning … “Dad ought to just hire a chef”.  Rude, I know.  Or maybe true … I’d be totally ok with it!

Any who … none of this should be any surprise.  I have not shown you the “Thanksgiving debacle of 2012”.  It looked exactly like the “Thanksgiving debacle of 2011” and the “Christmas debacle of another year gone by”.

It is this RIDICULOUS pretzel salad.  For starters, salad is such a misnomer.  There is not lettuce, no really anything resembling salad fixings except some frozen strawberries.  It has cream cheese, sugar and pretzels … none of which I’ve ever had in a salad!  But I digress …

Everyone raves over this salad.  Says it’s “SO good” or “one of our faves”.  Since mine had been total failures two previous times I (mistakenly) thought … “third times a charm, right?”

Wrong.

This is what it was supposed to look like:

And this, my friends, is what mine looked like:

Or, to put it another way:

No one even took a sympathy bite.  And to be honest, I didn’t try it either.  I just couldn’t bring myself to put it in my mouth.

So, I will not be making this ever again.  I don’t want tips or suggestions on how to make it better.  There are just some things better left to the professionals.

Truly.

Which is why I am thinking I could totally have a new career … become a “professional” if you will … in being a “foolproof test kitchen”.  People could send me their “foolproof” recipes and I could try them out.  Take pictures.

I’m thinking a lot more recipes would lose the word “foolproof” in the title if I offered this service.

Let me know if you need my help.  :)