Fudge for breakfast

I ate fudge for breakfast this morning, and since that necessitates a story, I will tell you mine. I've decided to meet our neighbors. There are only three other units on the top floor of our apartment building so this shouldn't be difficult, but it still makes me feel nervous. Our society has become very private, and even in the age of "social" media, the end result is that we keep people at an arms length.

We want people to see our best side, so we take 14 selfies until we get just the right one to update our profile picture, and we post status updates when we do exciting or interesting things so people have the illusion that we lead newsworthy lives. We don't meet our neighbors because if they decided to stop by unannounced they would know that it's noon and I'm still in my pajamas. They would also notice that my apartment smells like something burned because I forgot about the blueberry sauce I was heating up on the stove when I went to put my baby down for a nap. I don't post profile pictures of my unmakeuped, flat hair self, and my picture most certainly doesn't reveal the sour spit up smell residing somewhere on my left shoulder.

* I use to term "swirl" loosely because that's what I was hoping
 it would look like, but as you can see the swirl part was a fail.

So I'm meeting my neighbors, and since that makes me a little nervous, I've decided to get food involved. I've deliberated over what sort of treat to bring as a neighborly gesture, and came up with fudge. Since I feel some level of apprehension about eating home baked goods from strangers, I figured others might as well, and since making fudge has very little hand involvement it might not be as frightening to eat. Also, I don't know anyone who doesn't like fudge.

Yesterday I took the little one with me to the grocery store to purchase all the necessary ingredients for the fudge. As I hoped, she fell asleep in her front carrier while I paced the baking aisle. I found a simple fudge recipe on Allrecipes.com and decided to fancy it up by making a raspberry chocolate swirl, and mint chocolate swirl.

I managed to make the raspberry chocolate swirl*  batch in between baby needs. She didn't want to nap, which apparently made her very angry when evening rolled around. When she finally fell asleep I resolved to taking a hot bath and having a little pinot grigio.

This morning I got up to see if the fudge had set, and to make sure that it tasted good. I decided that I needed a whole piece to get the full flavor, and then a second because I can't give an ugly piece away, and a third as part of this complete breakfast. I'm not proud.

Raspberry Chocolate Fudge Recipe:

• 1 (14 oz.) can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1/4 cup butter at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 tsp. raspberry extract (I used imitation, don't judge) 
• Pink gel food coloring (optional) 

1. Using butter, grease an 8X8 inch glass baking dish on bottom and sides.
2. Divide the sweetened condensed milk and butter into two bowls with equal parts 
3. Put white chocolate chips in one bowl with raspberry extract and pink food coloring and stir
4. Put semi-sweet chocolate chips in the second bowl and stir
5. One bowl at a time, place in the microwave for 2-4 minutes on medium (or PL 5) 
6. Remove the bowl from the microwave and mix until smooth
7. Pour into greased baking dish (feel free to attempt to swirl them!) 
8. Let set in refrigerator for 2 hours or over night. 
9. Cut and serve!