Divinity Fudge/Candy/Whatever You Want to Call It

I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but both of my parents AND one of my brothers have birthdays in November. This means a lot of baking. My mom got those lovely cheesecake stuffed strawberries - actually, that was my parents' joint birthday party, but when I found this recipe for divinity fudge, I had to try it since divinity fudge is my dad's favorite candy ever.

Oh, and I'm not sure what you want to call it - divinity fudge, divinity candy, or just divinity - I've heard it called all three and there were never any outraged retorts. So if I go back and forth between what I call it throughout this post, it's because of the ambiguity behind the name.

So first of all, I figured I might have problems with this recipe, since the only two things the blogger says you MUST have for this recipe to work are a dry day and a good candy thermometer, and I lack the latter. I used a meat thermometer, but it topped out at 165 degrees, and the temperature called for when making the syrup is 252 degrees. The needle on my thermometer kept moving upwards but the notations stopped at 165, so I had to eyeball it. I suspect I removed it from the heat before it was ready.

I also lack a stand mixer, so when the recipe told me to beat the mixture for ten minutes, I thought I would die. I was especially thinking this when, ten minutes later, my mixture had not lost its gloss and was not holding in stiff peaks. I mixed for another five or ten minutes (it seemed like forever) and finally I figured if it was going to work, it would have by now, so I went ahead and threw in the vanilla extract and chopped walnuts.

My batch only yielded seventeen divinities, which is probably better anyway since my dad is the one who'd be eating most of them and he's not a huge sweets fan. After letting them set in the fridge overnight, they had firmed up nicely on the outside, but the inside was still very gooey.



I topped each one with a walnut half.

I wrote them off as a mixed success/failure, given that they tasted great but their consistency left something to be desired...but the next day they had firmed up all the way through, making them perfect. My dad liked them and that's what mattered the most, anyway.