Weddingbee Blog

I agonized over favors! First, there were none. Then, there were many. After writing this post and getting plenty of feedback on my options, I settled upon the one that would require the most effort, but the least amount of money: Homemade fudge.

Let me clarify: By “effort,” I mean melting chocolate, pouring it into a pan, and sticking it in the fridge. Yeah. Sooooo hard.

I used my mom’s fudge recipe, since it was the only fudge I can ever remember liking. I had it so much growing up that any other fudge just tastes too sugary, or too “off” to me.

The recipe:

• 1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 bag butterscotch chips
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

I picked up a cheap double boiler with a Bed Bath & Beyond gift card I got at my shower, and melted the chocolate and butterscotch chips over a near-boil.

Then, I removed it from the heat and dumped (technical term) in the condensed milk and vanilla extract and stirred that up.

Poured it into a pan coated with cooking spray…

And stuck it in the fridge overnight to set. You probably don’t need to leave it in as long, but I did because… I forgot.

I’d also recommend letting it come to room temperature before cutting into pieces, because my trial run was a bit messy. Delicious, but messy.

The fudge kept for about three weeks in a Tupperware, until we ate it all. It might have lasted longer, but I can’t promise.

My little tags took about an hour or so to make while watching Parks & Recreation on Netflix.

I decided to go with pink paper/gray ribbon and gray paper/pink ribbon, just for some variety.

You can see how weird and misshapen the test run pieces were. I swear I won’t put what looks like bags of poo on our guests’ plates.

I calculated that to do 5 pieces of fudge for 60 guests, we’d need to make about 7.5 pans of fudge in the days leading up to the wedding. But that sounds scarier than it it, because we have an assortment of Pyrex and other pans around the house, not just the 9×13 we used in the test run. We should be able to make 8 batches in the double boiler with and pour into different containers until it’s all gone and in the fridge to cool. I sort of tentatively plan on starting this the Tuesday before the wedding, chilling Tuesday night, room temp-ing Wednesday during the day, cutting and storing Wednesday night, and packaging Thursday evening. I would try to have it all done by Wednesday, when we’re bringing everything else to the caterer, but the packaging isn’t really airtight, and I don’t want anything to get melty or weird, so we’ll have somebody bring the bags to the venue the day of.

Did you decide on favors? Edible, right?

*All personal photos