Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

Yesterday I was reading Daddy-Long-Legs, and the protagonist Judy went to a taffy pull.  Just reading the word "taffy" put me in the mood to make candy, so I took Jane Sharrock's Who Wants Candy? down from the shelf and started browsing.  I settled on making a chocolate peanut butter fudge to send to my sister and brother-in-law since she likes chocolate fudge and he likes peanut butter fudge.  The book has three recipes for chocolate peanut butter fudge, but I settled on Classic Combo Fudge because I wanted to use real peanut butter, not peanut butter chips, and because I wanted more than the "hint" of peanut flavor in the Fancy Chocolate Fudge.  This is my first marshmallow fudge, and I think it turned out well.  The cocoa powder gave a good kick of chocolate, and I used natural peanut butter rather than ultra-processed Skippy and Jif, so it has a strong peanut flavor as well. 

As the fudge bubbled away, the temperature stalled around 215 F.  I needed the temperature to get up to 234-240 with 236 recommended, and since it's rainy out I decided to go all the way to 240 to cook out a little of the extra moisture in the air (I may have over compensated a bit - the fudge is a little too dry).  I noticed as the fudge cooked that different stirring styles made the thermometer move up or down.  A fast stir would drop the temperature as I incorporated cool air into the hot liquid.  Slower stirs mixed the hottest fudge on the bottom of the pan in with the cooler areas toward the top and ended up raising the temperature.  I settled on a method of slowly stirring the fudge for several minutes, then leaving it for a few minutes to do another task, then returning to a slow stir.  This method made the fudge cook at a fairly constant and still slow rate, which is necessary for good candy, but also gave it a little kick-start when the thermometer seemed to stall.