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    Home » My Weird Food Obsession Podcast » Fudge Making: How A Food Hobby Turned Into A Holiday Tradition

    Fudge Making: How A Food Hobby Turned Into A Holiday Tradition

    Published: Apr 5, 2021 · Modified: May 8, 2021 by Jenna Passaro · This post may contain affiliate links.

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    title text overlay with wooden bowls filled with caramels, sugar, and walnuts and podcast logo

    Listen to My Weird Food Obsession Podcast – episode 16 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts to hear:

    Are you obsessed with chocolate?? What about fudge? Today’s obsessed foodie loves fudge as a food hobby so much, she makes 100 LBs of it a year.

    Yea, that’s a whole lot of fudge! Kelly Lupton, a life coach, makes 100 pounds of fudge for fun when Christmas rolls around each year.  We talked about how her food hobby started, how it grew, and why she’s refused to make money from her hobby so far.

    The beginnings of something big

    Kelly’s fudge making adventure began when her youngest was still just a toddler. Her family was on a really tight budget: she had ten dollars to stretch into gifts for everyone. How far can ten dollars go? Not far, if you start buying.

    And then Kelly remembered a story her mother-in-law used to tell, about how, in the days when their own budget was tight, they had made fudge as gifts because it was something they could do with very little outlay; a way to get a homemade gift for everybody without baking the bank.

    She called her mother in law to find the heirloom recipe and make it with her kids, and was surprised that it was simply the recipe on the back of a can of marshmallow fluff. A simple chocolate recipe; no flavor combinations provided.

    20 pounds of chocolate was all her budget could stretch to that year, but it was enough: enough to provide gifts for everyone, and to let them all know they were loved. The feedback she got back was wonderful: everyone commented about how good it was, and wished she would do it again next year. After that, it only expanded.

    How to make fudge at home

    Though Kelly began with the simple recipe from the back of the can of marshmallow fluff, she didn’t allow herself to be limited by it. Instead, she did lots of experimentation: adding flavors and tweaking ingredients to make dozens of different kinds of fudge to share with her loved ones.

    The recipe she began with she knows now by heart: one can of marshmallow fluff, half a cup of butter, 11 ounces of evaporated milk, and five cups of sugar. Then vanilla, salt, and chocolate chips.  That’s all mixed together and cooked on the stovetop, with some dedicated stirring that gives her arms a serious workout.

    You can’t leave the stove after it’s begun to melt, and you can’t stop stirring. She’s tried using electric mixers or whisks, but they just don’t do the trick. Her fudge requires commitment, and it’s not easy: the fudge gets stiff and is hard to handle. It’s like trying to melt and stir bread dough, she explains. 

    But it’s worth it. She’ll put music on, and she’ll tell anyone who comes into the kitchen: don’t bother me, I’m busy. For an hour, she’s committed to the stove, and to that pot of stiff, sweet, sticky fudge that can’t be left an instant.

     Fudge-flavored life advice

    It would be easy for Kelly to turn her fudge-making tradition into a money-making side gig: people love fudge, and they’d be happy to pay $10/lb to buy up the fruit of her labors. But Kelly feels that to sell fudge would spoil it for her. 

    She would lose the flexibility she has to experiment, to try new flavors, and it would be in danger of becoming a grind. Fudge making isn’t easy, and she didn’t feel it was something she wanted to do for cash.

    Kelly hopes that Corona will be a wake up call, and people will take time to find activities they enjoy, and do them just because they enjoy doing them. Shut off your TV, she tells us in the podcast. Go experience life. You don’t need to keep the TV off permanently, but give yourself a chance to find your own experiences, to be intentional and in the moment.

    For me, the smell of fudge always brings me back to the little touristy places by ocean boardwalks – where the doors and windows are left open and all the good candy smells drift out, and I go in and try all the samples. There are so many varieties, each better than the last, and I always end up with a peanut butter fudge—my favorite.

    Will fudge making be your new “just for fun” foodie adventure, or will you choose something else? Wherever you end up, I hope you have just as much fun experimenting as Kelly Lupton did! And if you’re not up to stirring for hours but still find yourself craving that delicious fudge  flavor, remember, Chewy Fudge Brownies is a perfectly valid option!

    Learn more about making fudge as a hobby

    Listen to My Weird Food Obsession Podcast – episode 16 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

    More from My Weird Food Obsession

    • Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Amazon-Audible
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    • Connect on Instagram @sipbitego and @myweirdfoodobsession
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    jenna passaro food blogger from Portland Oregon

    Hey, I’m Jenna Passaro.

    I develop easy recipes that can transform your kitchen into a restaurant – and you into a true home chef.

      

    Where to start?

    Learn the secrets to smoking tasty Traeger recipes and making pizza at home. And cook amazing tri tip steak dinners.

    Or, fall in love with something new to cook with your air fryer, pellet smoker, BBQ grill, sous vide cooker, and more…

    You’ll notice, I kind of geek out over new cooking trends and tools!

    Instagram me @sipbitego & chef hubs @handmodelpatrick

    My story. Growing up, I didn’t learn to cook.

    (I was actually banned from cooking for years)

    And then in my 20’s I didn’t have to cook because my job as an event planner involved a lot of travel and it was easier to eat out. At the time, I was 100% positive that restaurant food would always taste better than cooking at home, and there was nothing I could do about it.

    Until I fell in love with a chef. He would come over and cook me delicious meals right in my own kitchen. My mind was blown.

    Since then, I’ve been on a mission to figure out easy ways to make restaurant style food at home and share it here on Sip Bite Go.

    Love to eat out and travel? I can totally relate. See my guide on where to eat in Portland, OR.

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    Never in a million years did I imagine I’d ditch the 9-5 lifestyle in my late 20’s, move across the country on a whim, start a new life, start a food blog, and write a book.

    But here I am!

    See my book on Amazon: The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook.

     

       

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