Welcome back to Diet Killers, my series that’s become a bit sporadic and doesn’t always (as I’d originally intended) spotlight a chocolate dessert. We’re barely into October, but Halloween will be here before we know it, so here’s a recipe and a book recommendation to get you in the spirit.
Have you ever
wondered what recipe you’d put on your gravestone? I’m
not inclined to put one on mine, and I’m willing to bet most of you won’t
either. Martha Kathryn “Kay” Kirkham Andrews did, though, and I’m so glad.
Kay Andrews
was known, throughout her long life, for her compassion and her wonderful
fudge. The two went together; when family and friends needed encouragement, she
wrote them a poem and delivered it along with a batch of fudge. What a
sweetheart! She lived to be 97 and asked that her fudge recipe be engraved on
her headstone so that she could continue making people happy by sharing the
recipe. (The original engraving had a typo, calling for one tablespoon of
vanilla. The headstone has since been updated to correct the error.) Fudge is
sweet, but even sweeter is the final line on Kay’s headstone: “Wherever she
goes, there is laughter.”
The
larger world now knows about Kay’s fudge thanks to Rosie Grant, a digital
librarian in Washington, D.C. She collects and prepares gravestone recipes as a
sort of hobby. She’s posted them on her TikTok account @ghostlyarchive and, in October 2025, she
came out with the New York Times bestselling book To Die For: A Cookbook of
Gravestone Recipes. The book is a collection of forty recipes she’s found
on gravestones across the globe. The recipes range from chicken soup to guava
cobbler, with honey wheat bread and tea biscuits in between. Most of the
recipes are for desserts, though, making sweet memories for the loved ones left
behind.
Kay’s recipe,
as written on her gravestone, is below in my lovely drawing. So that it's easier for you to make your own fantastic fudge, I've typed the recipe with the list of ingredients first followed by
more detailed directions.
On a food
chemistry site called Ricardo you can read about why you shouldn’t
stir in the two steps where that’s specified, plus clear instructions for how
to test softball stage.
Kay’s
Fudge
Ingredients
2 squares
chocolate (Baker’s Chocolate squares used to weigh one ounce. Now they weigh
half an ounce. I used four squares)
2 tablespoons
butter
1 cup milk
3 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
Directions
Line an 8” x
8” pan with parchment paper and have all ingredients ready.
In a
heavy-bottomed saucepan, while stirring over low heat, melt the chocolate and
butter. When the chocolate and butter are melted, stir in the milk, sugar, and
salt. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Over
medium-low heat, let the mixture come to a boil—without stirring.
Continue cooking over medium-low until the mixture has reached 234 degrees F (softball
stage).
Remove from
heat and let cool—without stirring—to 109-113 degrees F. You can hasten the cooling
by putting the pan in sink of cold water. Don’t use ice water because the outer
edges will cool too quickly while the middle stays hot.
When cool,
beat the mixture continually until it visibly thickens and loses a bit of its
luster, 5 to 15 minutes.
Pour into the
prepared pan, allow to cool completely and, as Kay Andrews tells us, eat.
Would you
like to be remembered for a special recipe by having it on your gravestone? What
will it be?
Molly MacRae writes the Haunted Shell Shop
Mysteries, the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, and the award-winning, national
bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest, connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
