In a week or so, my kitchen will be overflowing with pans of fudge. I’ve been known to have 20 pans sitting on my counters, getting sliced up and mixed into assortments for family and friends. Somehow, everyone always looks forward to fudge with so much excitement that I have a hard time gifting anything else.

As long as we’re talking holidays, I might as well admit that I have some leftover Milky Way bars left over from Halloween. Or I should say, I had some. Now they’re all in this fudge!

Yesterday I had the most epic of baking fail days. We’ve all had them, and we pray that they’re few and far between. With this one, I actually wound up on the kitchen floor sobbing, while my daughter patted my back and said, “Mommy, just do it again.”

The “it” she was referring to was the cake I made three times in one day. Three. And it was a delicious cake all three times, but it seemed reluctant to get out of the pan without crumbling. On the final try, I was smart enough to use a different pan.

Still, by the time all was said and done, I was covered in a bag of flour (which exploded without any provocation whatsoever), there was a sink piled high with spatulas and mixing bowls, and I’d gone through a couple of pounds of butter. Thank heaven I know people who will eat the failed cakes so they don’t go to waste.

At the end of the day, the kitchen was clean, I had two packaged cakes ready to head to work, and one that didn’t fail. While I was proud of myself for not giving up, it was still way too tempting to stay on the kitchen floor and eat chunks of ugly failed cake.

We all have bad days, and I’m just lucky that when they happen, I have kids to pat me on the back and Kenny to play with them so I can keep on keeping on. Otherwise, the whole operation might fold and crumble.

In all my years of baking, fudge has never let me down, and I don’t expect it to. I love it too much, and I hope the feeling is mutual.

When you make this, be sure to use milk chocolate chips. Anything darker wouldn’t work as well with the creaminess of the Milky Way bars. And also be sure to layer half of the candy bars on the bottom evenly, to ensure a wonderful bite of Milky Way from top to bottom.

As the holidays near and our baking frenzies reach  fever pitch, we’re all bound to have a few failures. I hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does, roll with it. Or cry on the kitchen floor, whichever suits you. The important thing is to eventually get up and keep baking!

Nothing will please a crowd faster than chocolate cake, and when you add a rich chocolate glaze and cover the cake with all kinds of candy bars, you’re basically asking people to come to your house and never leave. If that sounds okay to you, proceed!

After all, nothing will fill a house full of visitors faster than baked goods. I find that when there’s a candy assortment in the mix, you just have to get used to having privacy invaded on a regular basis.

That’s not really a problem for me, but for Kenny, it’s awful. He’s an introvert, and our house is very loud for him already. Our three monsters make a ton of hullabaloo, and when their little monster friends come over, it’s even worse. I try to hide the chocolate during any and all play dates.

It’s kind of tough when an extrovert marries an introvert. I charge my batteries by being with other people, and I’ve had to really cut that back now that I see what it can do to Kenny. He would never complain, but I know that spending the day around people is not his thing at all.

Whenever we do get together with friends, I have a really great time. But I can usually tell from Kenny’s body language that he’s dying to get home and lie on the couch. I mean, that does sound nice, for maybe an hour or so. Then I really want to get out there again and hang out with people.

Our society really gives introverts a bad rap. We make it harder for them to get ahead in the workplace, we misinterpret their preference for quiet as hostile or unfriendly, and we refuse to acknowledge that it’s okay for some people to prefer to be alone to get their energy. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have friends, or want to do well at work, or anything else. It’s just a different way of seeing the world.

It gets to the point where introverts force themselves uncomfortably out of their natural preferences, and it shows. My mom is an introvert, but she values the qualities that extroverts exhibit, so she goes out of her way to be very social. I admire her for putting herself out there, but as a natural extrovert (not to mention her daughter), I can tell when she’d rather be at home getting some downtime.

Regardless of social preference, we can all agree that a candy bar chocolate bundt cake is a good way to unwind and recharge after a long and stressful day. I made sure to pile this high with as many candy bars as I could: we’ve got Almond Joy, Snickers, Milky Way, Twix, Reese’s, Kit Kats, Nestle Crunch and M & Ms. And have I mentioned the thick chocolate glaze? I think I did, but it bears repeating.

As long as I keep baking cakes like this, people will drop by on any old pretext to share a slice. I love it, and as for Kenny, well, he’s getting used to it. But I don’t want him to change, and we’ll keep meeting somewhere in the middle. Introvert or extrovert, we can all bond over a big slice of cake at the end of the day.