2 Ingredient Extra Lazy Fudge

In the midst of experiments with blacklight-activated foods, and having determined that cookies contain too much stuff in them that clearly overwhelms the blacklight factor. Beverages proved a glowing success. (Yes.) Cookies proved a tasty disappointment. What can be made that reduces variables even more than the cookies? The laziest of lazy desserts, a "fudge" that calls for a two ingredient base: sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips.

There are a number of versions of it; the most minimal of which is this one here from Chocolate, Chocolate and More. Their methodology is the simplest, too:

• drop all the ingredients into a microwavable bowl

• melt it all together

• line a pan with parchment

• pour in the mix

• let cool

• remove from pan, cut into squares, serve

While microwaving all the things is obviously fine, here we prefer pre-melting the chocolate, then adding the..... are we really going to say "Sweetened Condensed Milk" every time? No, we won't. Bear with us here: Russians use the stuff enough to have a one-word nickname for it.

Brace for impact: sguschenka. (s'goo-SHON-kuh). Get it? Got it? Good.

Anyway, melting the chocolate first lets you confirm that it'd melted evenly before disguising it in the sguschenka. Use a 30 second nuker burst, stir, repeat until done. (Due to a recent microwave upgrade, the "melt it automatically" mode was used to see how that works. It's pretty magical. Also, it pauses 30 seconds short of completion point to prompt you to stir the chocolate, and then put it back in to finish the job. This was realized when making the second batch. The first batch was used at the 30-seconds-short point, and was actually nicer and more controllable to work with.)

The above recipe uses the ratio of:

• 1 can of sguschenka

• 2 cups of chocolate chips.

Other recipes add butter, which does make it richer. For example:

• half-stick (4 tbsp) of butter

• 1 can of sguschenka

• 3 cups of chocolate chips.

When doing that, we found it easiest to pre-melt the chips slightly, then add the butter sliced into half-finger-width slabs to let them finish melting together, and add in the sguschenka when it's even-ish goo.

Sometimes chocolate chips are just not chocolate enough, so adding some cocoa powder makes the flavor more intense. (Perhaps a heaping tablespoon? As optional ingredients go, "measure with your heart" applies).

Oh, and always a pinch of salt. Just see chocolate on the list, add a pinch of salt, don't wait for them to tell you so, it makes the chocolate more chocolate.

You know what else is awesome with chocolate? A bit of cinnamon. Not "is this pumpkin spice flavored or something" levels of cinnamon (although, hmmm!), but just enough to make you notice there's another little thing going on.

Heck, if you're into such things, bet a small quantity of something spicy could be pretty nifty, too. (No guesses as to what kind, capsaicin is not a Gargoyle specialty.)

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Research so far has indicated that 1. Vitamin B2, aka riboflavin, (available online but possibly not in a pharmacy near you) glows gorgeous green while looking unsightly yellow and 2. white chocolate chips allegedly have a natural glow, but are pretty wimpy about it.

So, the recipe was divided into halves. One was to become a regular chocolate fudge, the other to involve white chocolate chips to see how they do. Each half further got divided into two halves. On the white side, the control quarter would be unaugmented to see if the chocolate chips stand a chance, and the experiment quarter would get a full pill. (The pills were crushed and not filtered). On the proper chocolate half, control would just be boring, both quarters get a pill, but if we're playing divide games, might as well make a quarter with walnuts, having meant to try that someday.

Being low on the magic sweet milky substance necessitated a trip to the corner grocery, where in the Latin section a startling discovery was made. Sweetened Condensed Filled Milk. Whereas the regular sguschenka is just milk and sugar, this variant would take out some of the milk fats and replace them with vegetable oils. Normally this is a kind of shenanigan that the Gargoyle objects to, but this particular instance of it had added riboflavin, which is aka B2, which perhaps might assist the recipe in glowiness, so it was gotten just this once. (The taste was more or less right, and any weird aftertastes probably entirely psychosomatic.)

Verdict: the good pics showing all the varieties with blacklight have mysteriously disappeared, but there wasn't much to show in the first place, so here's some leftovers. The white-chip vitamin did not glow any better than the white-chip control, which did not glow particularly better than the adulterated chocolate which did not glow any better than the regular non-glowy chocolate. One can sort of see specks of unfiltered B2 crumbs.

The walnuts are a keeper, though.

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Bonus Content: something's gotta glow, right?

You know what can actually be persuaded to be made to glow in the dark that can be construed as food rather than beverage? Jell-o!

Shots! Shots! Shots!

Jello shots were implemented as follows:

• per instruction on the box, 1 cup of water was boiled

• 2 pills of vitamin B2 were filtered and dropped into hot water.

• the mix was stirred into the hot water until dissolved

• per this recipe by The Jellinator, cold water was replaced with half-cup vodka and half-cup flavored liqueur. (Two batches were made, one with off-brand chambord and the other with triple sec).

• the vodka used for this was one prepped earlier which already had a B2 pill in it, but that's not likely to be significant

• one batch makes 12 condiment cups

• cups get capped and placed in the fridge for a few hours

verdict: condiment cups, while convenient for pouring and storage, are actually hard to do shots from. But flavors and ratios are good, and both orange and raspberry liqueurs play well with strawberry base.