SC - Oh Fudge! OOP

[Bonne of Traquair]

My daughter wants to make her boyfriend a batch of fudge for Valentine's 
Day.  This morning I made sure all the ingredients were around, and then, 
naturally, decided to make a batch for the rest of us.

The chocolate and milk and sugar were boiling happily on the stove.  I 
reached into the drawer to get the instant read thermometer, and discovered 
it doesn't go up to candy making temperatures!  It stops at 220 F and I 
needed to know when the temp was about 234 F.  I couldn't stop at that point 
to find the chart describing the soft ball to hard crack stages of sugar 
cooking, so I guessed that having the needle go a little past the 220 mark 
would have to do.  Pulled it off the burner, added the butter and vanilla 
and waited for it to cool back down to 110 F before proceeding to the 
beating.  So far, so good.  I thought.


Looking at it a few minutes later, I realized it was already crystalizing!  
I stirred in what butter I could, and scaped the stuff from the saucepan to 
the cooling tray. The rest of it, now hard chocolate candy, is currently 
soaking out of the saucepan.

I need ideas for what to do with this stuff I have.  It's chocolate sugar.  
Sugar crystals the size of normal sugar crystals, but they are chocolate.  A 
few lumps that are larger are easily crushed.  Taste yum, but a bit messy.  
Off hand, I can imagine it might flavor hot cocoa nicely.  Vanilla ice cream 
is the traditional repository of failed fudge that refuses to crystalize - 
ta-da, it's fudge sauce.  But I guess these crystals can be sprinkled over 
the ice cream.

Any other ideas?

I'm off to buy a candy thermometer.  I hope there is such a thing as an 
instant read version.  I've broken more than one of that kind with the 
regular thermometer in a test tube.

Bonne
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