Birthdays and making fudge

My son turns 16 today.

We celebrated the big event yesterday because he is unavailable tonight -- he'll be in a film critique workshop, one of his duties as a juror with Viewfinders, the youth version of the Atlantic Film Festival.

But back to the birthday.

He requested a simple pound cake and I decided to attempt a chocolate fudge frosting. Fudge. As in perfect boiling point, need a candy thermometer, precise timing, fudge.

I was seven the last time I attempted the candy. It's taken 40 years for me to try again.

Back then the celebration was my mother's birthday. She had been feeling rather depressed at the thought of another year passing without notice -- she being the organizer rather than the organizee of such things.

I determined to make that year different. I was going to make fudge.

Now, I'm not sure why my childish fancy opted for that over more traditional cake. Perhaps my insatiable sweet tooth was to blame. However, opt for it I did.

Some time later, after standing over a hot stove and stirring like a dervish, I was rewarded with a brown sludge coated in a thin film more reminiscent of plastic wrap than chocolate.

I don't recall if, at that point, I realized my efforts had failed. I don't remember if I had ever even seen or eaten real fudge in order to make the comparison. But what I do know is that I was determined to garnish the brown slop in the rectangular metal pan with the words: Happy Birthday, Mom and to set this off with little flowers along the edges.

By the time I was finished, the brown effluence was topped by light green puddles of icing sugar and water.

It has taken 40 years to recover.

And so, yesterday, I began the process once more forgetting that I needed a candy thermometer, that when the recipe calls for finely-shaved chocolate, it doesn't mean chocolate chips and that I still haven't the foggiest notion of how to determine the moment when the mixture "begins to lose its sheen."

According the The Joy of Cooking, fudge was created "by accident, like so many culinary successes."

I would like to point out that no accident in my kitchen has ever resulted in a culinary success although my attempts at culinary success have often ended in accidents.

As a matter of fact, six hours in my kitchen produced two overly-dry pound cakes, a rock hard chocolate confection that is, at best, something like taffy, and a pile of dirty dishes.

I'm going to buy a birthday cake today. Technically, it won't even be late.

Colleen