Oreos taste like freedom. After my youngest daughter completed two awkward middle-school years of teeth straightening, her first post-orthodontia request was for the Nabisco classic. I expected her to tear into the box with the relieved jubilation of a Super Bowl victor.
Instead, she sat at the dinner table and consumed those sandwich cookies with the steely determination of a grizzled gumshoe nursing a whiskey at the end of the bar. "Ah yes, my old friends," her 12 year-old eyes seemed to say. "We're going to be here a while."
As I, too, now approach the end of my own, middle-aged, dental odyssey, I understand that emotion. I don't want to whoop it up. I just want chocolate crumbs and creme filling all over every crevice of my straight, beautiful teeth.
While consuming one's Oreos straight out of the package is never a bad serving suggestion, I decided recently to amp up the experience just a notch with my very first foray into fudge.
I haven't had much exposure to fudge in my life. Growing up, it was somehow considered a Protestant delicacy, like Jell-O salad and Tang. Yet when I consider the transcendent delights of a cereal bar and a cookie cake, I can't believe it took me this long to convert.
Oreo fudge requires a mere three ingredients — and less than ten minutes of your time. And then you have fudge! Made of Oreos! It tastes like milk and cookies, because that's what it's made of. That's why it's sweetly nostalgic, even if your actual memories are more like, "Fudge? What are we, Baptists?"
This morning, while my daughter was at her computer doing the at-home version of high school, I slid a square across the desk. She quietly nibbled it with the same determined visage I've come to know as the Oreo Poker Face. When I sliced myself off a bite, I couldn't suppress a smile. A pearly, even, densely cookie-flecked smile.
* * *
Recipe: Three-ingredient Oreo Fudge, adapted from Sweet & Savory Meals and Suburban Simplicity
Makes 24 fudge bites
Ingredients:
- 1 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk
- 1 12-ounce bag of white chocolate chips (or 12 ounces of your favorite white chocolate, chopped)
- 20-25 Oreos, roughly chopped
Instructions:
- Line an 8x8 or 9x9 square pan with parchment paper, and lightly grease it.
- Over low-medium heat, warm the condensed milk. Add the white chocolate, and stir until it's completely melted.
- Mix in your broken cookies until well-blended.
- Pour into prepared pan, and chill in refrigerator for at least an hour.
- Slice and serve. Your fudge will keep for about a week, and it makes perfect study break fuel.
Shares