This Gravestone Has A Recipe For Fudge Engraved On It. Here's Why
There are recipes that are so horrible they deserve to be locked away for all eternity, and others that we wish could be immortalized because they are just that good. One of those "too good to lose" recipes is making the rounds online because of the way it's being shared.
The recipe is for "Kay's fudge" and its precise instructions list the order every ingredient (chocolate, butter, milk, sugar, vanilla, salt) is meant to be prepared and used. The language used to describe the fudge is sparse, direct, and in a way that would make any Twitter user proud — but it needs to be that way, because it is presented on the tombstone of its owner, Kathryn "Kay" Andrews (via Today).
Kay passed away in 2019, nearly 20 years after her beloved husband Wade did. After her husband died, she put together the images that figure prominently on his side of the tombstone, and her children felt it was equally important for Kay to be "seen," which is where the tombstone comes in (via Fox13).
Fudge carries a symbolic meaning for those who knew and loved Kay. Her daughter, Janice Johnson, told Fox13 that her mother "really loved people. She would write poetry, and she would take fudge whenever people got together."
Kay's original tombstone had an error that needed to be fixed
Kathryn "Kay" Andrews' tombstone is something of an attraction at the Logan City Cemetery in Utah (via Atlas Obscura), but if you were planning to cook up the recipe (which we assume was Kay and her children's intent), know that the gravestone had to be changed recently because it had a typo. Instead of calling for a teaspoon of vanilla, it called for a tablespoon, which would give you runny fudge. Today says this error has since been corrected.
This isn't the first time a family has used the death of a loved one to share a recipe in a more permanent way. Instructions for "Mom's Christmas Cookies," which were also etched on the tombstone of Maxine Menster, can be found online. And while netizens say the recipe came from the fact that Menster would only share her recipe "over her dead body," her daughter Jane has since come forward to say that the decision to share the recipe in this way was the result of a decision she and her father had reached together. "Mom was a very generous person," she said (via The Gazette). "This was a sentimental thing between my father and I."