Diet Killers: Recipes for Readers and Writers – Gravestone Fudge from Molly MacRae

 

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.