This Grandma’s Fudge Recipe Was So Good, She Put It On Her Gravestone

A headstone in a Utah cemetery made headlines a few years ago for an extremely sweet reason: In addition to the birth and death dates for Wade and Kathryn Andrews, the marker prominently features a recipe for “Kay’s Fudge.” 

“She would write poetry, and she would take fudge whenever people got together,” Janice Johnson said of her mother, Kathryn, who went by Kay, to Utah’s Fox 13 in 2021. 

When Wade passed away in 2000, Kay helped select images to engrave on their joint headstone representing her husband’s life (an airplane to honor his Air Force service and a graduation cap to reflect his career as a sociology professor, for instance). To keep things balanced on the monument, her children asked Kay how she would like to be remembered. Her answer? Her famous fudge recipe.

How to Make Kay’s Fudge Recipe 

Of course, we had to try it. We tasked Meg Smith (aka @megsescapades) with testing the iconic recipe—and it’s just as wonderful as you’d expect. 

Since the recipe itself doesn’t include a lot of detail, Smith shared some tips and tricks from her experience:

• The recipe calls for “two squares [of] chocolate,” which is equal to 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate (a 100-percent cacao baking bar).
• “Brush down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush and a tiny bit of water after you add the sugar and the mixture begins to lightly bubble,” Meg recommends. “This step removes any crystals that may have formed on the sides, preventing them from getting into the fudge mixture and causing it to become grainy.”
• The recipe says to cook the mixture to “softball stage,” which is 240 degrees F (115 degrees C). You can also test it by dropping some fudge into cold water—if it forms a pliable ball, you’re in the right spot. 
• “I didn‘t cool the fudge on a marble slab (since most people don’t have one), so I tested cooling it in a glass bowl, and it worked well,” Meg says. “I found that cooling it to 115 degrees F (46 degrees C) is ideal before beating. If I cooled it to 110 degrees F (43 degrees C), the fudge would start setting before I could get it into the pan.”

Here’s the full recipe for Kay’s Fudge, as it is written on the headstone. 

• 2 SQ. CHOCOLATE
• 2 TBS. BUTTER
• MELT ON LOW HEAT
• STIR IN 1 CUP MILK
• BRING TO BOIL
• 3 CUPS SUGAR
• 1 TSP. VANILLA
• PINCH OF SALT
• COOK TO SOFTBALL STAGE
• POUR ON MARBLE SLAB
• COOL & BEAT & EAT