Out of munchies in the house, and not feeling like dealing with the world outside long enough to go shopping, I found a brick of baking chocolate and decided to try to turn it into something edible. I tried using brown sugar to sweeten it, only to discover that my supply of brown sugar, unused since the last time I tried baking something half a year ago or longer, had turned into a light brown brick. Softening this brick with water seemed to work to get a bit out, and after I hit on using whipped cream to lighten up the resulting sweetened, melted mass, I ended up with something tolerably fudge-like.
Noting that the water didn't seem to be spreading well to loosen up the rest of the brick, I put a bit more in, aiming at the other side of the bag and set the entire thing aside to sit and moisten. This turned out to be an awful mistake; the process may have been slow, but it was steady, with the water not going much of anywhere until the entire bag was reduced to a deep brown sludge with an even darker pool of liquid on top, and the bag had insufficient structural integrity to keep it from creating an oozing puddle on the countertop by the time I looked at it the next day.
Unsure what to do with the mess, I poured off the watery part into a small pan, which reminded me that if you cook sugar, it becomes caramel. I decided to try an experiment. Adding a dollop of the more solid (or at least less liquid) sugar sludge and a couple pats of butter, I set the concoction to simmer. It produced a very eldtrich-looking bubbling foam for a while, and when I realized the result was still far too liquidy, I looked around for something to thicken it. A small lump of Bisquick later, and it looked much more reasonable. I let it cook for a while longer to let the Bisquick dissolve completely, and then let it cool.
Aside from burning my tongue when I wasn't patient enough in the sampling, I took no harm from the result, which turned out to be a disc of hard candy somewhat remniscent of hard toffee. I may even try it again at some point, since otherwise I have no idea what I'm going to do with the leftover soggy mass of sugar. I have a suspicion that it won't be quite the same even after it dries out a bit.
