A childhood experience made me wonder whether holiday candy making wasn’t better left to the experts. These would be people with vast amounts of free time and patience, as well as the ability to focus intently on a candy thermometer in order to avoid certain catastrophe.

My aversion to the rigors of holiday candy making can be traced to a December afternoon in my mother’s kitchen. During my childhood, making both hard and soft candies was so much a part of the holiday ritual that for years my mother bought corn syrup by the gallon, something that bewilders me to this day.

For reasons that will be lost on people who have been raised eating chocolate and the kind of candy that has been commercially popular since World War II, my mother considered hard candy, particularly the striped variety called “ribbon candy,” to be required holiday fare. Undoubtedly, it was part of her own childhood.

Because children innately love sweet stuff, the opportunity to observe the making of holiday ribbon candy should have been a treat for a 4-year-old, but what I remember most was that the process was hot and tedious. My mother worked quickly and with a degree of precision that held no fascination for me. This was not the kind of casual, licking-the-spatula kitchen experience I usually shared with my mother.

I do recall being mildly impressed when homemade ribbon candy materialized in scrunchy strips, but even in my pre-kindergarten mind, I couldn’t make the return on investment pencil out. This was really, really hard work.

The holiday candies that made a lot more sense to me as I got older were the soft crystalline candies. I never developed an affection for divinity, but fudge I could wrap my chocolate-loving taste buds around. Even though you need a candy thermometer to do it right, making fudge is fairly easy and has a greater margin for error than hard candy.

Following is a basic holiday fudge recipe from an old Better Homes and Garden kitchen encyclopedia. The recipe is accompanied by the following helpful note: “To repair fudge that has become too stiff before it is turned into the pan, knead with hands till it softens. Press into buttered pan or shape into a roll, then slice. For fudge that doesn’t set, stir in 1/4 cup milk and recook to given temperature. Then beat till correct consistency.”

See? You can’t mess it up.

Santa’s Fudge

2 cups granulated sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Dash salt

2/3 cup water

2 tablespoons butter or margarine

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup broken walnuts

Butter an 8-by-8-by-2-inch pan and set aside.

Butter the sides of a heavy 3-quart saucepan. In it combine sugar, cocoa, salt, water and butter. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, till sugar dissolves and mixture boils. Cook to soft-ball stage (234 degrees).

Immediately remove pan from heat. Cool to lukewarm (110 degrees) without stirring. Add vanilla. Beat vigorously until fudge becomes very thick and starts to lose its gloss.

Quickly stir in walnuts. Spread fudge into the buttered pan. While it is still warm, score it into 1-inch squares. When firm, cut the fudge into pieces.