Hey Guys, MiaT is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This means I get to link you to awesome stuff, and I will make a little commission to help keep MiaT up and running!
This past week was our Employee Appreciation Week, and it had a carnival theme. We had a lot of fun! There were carnival games, food, and a bunch of guest visitors from other branches of the company.
I ate my first fried Oreo which was simultaneously delicious and disgusting. All that grease! But that’s to be expected.
There was cotton candy on a stick (Side note: Other countries’ names for cotton candy include Candy Floss, Fairy Floss, Tooth Floss and Sugar Clouds. Sugar Clouds is my favorite.) which made me particularly happy. I never had cotton candy on a stick as a kid, but I would always see it in old pictures and things. When I got cotton candy, it was always in a bag. I’ve had it on a stick only one other time. Yuuumy!

We also had a dessert contest at work. I originally planned to make a Big Top-themed cake with a performing elephant on top but ran out of time. I decided to make the easiest thing I could find – fudge. Normally, we make peanut butter fudge, but I was feeling some chocolate.
This recipe is all over Pinterest from a dozen different sites with little to no variation.
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 bag of chocolate chips
1 tsp. vanilla
sprinkles (optional)
Put the full bag of chocolate chips into a microwaveable bowl. Pour the can of sweetened condensed milk and vanilla over them. Microwave for one minute, stir, pour, chill, and serve. It’s that easy! (But I will give you some additional tips in a moment.)
I’ve made this with both semi-sweet chocolate and milk chocolate chips, and it sets up about the same with both. My mother thinks that the semi-sweet chocolate chips are too “chocolaty,” but I think they’re just fine. (There is never enough chocolate for me!)
For work, knowing that each judge would need a piece and having already bought the elephant, I decided to pipe the fudge into mini cupcake wrappers instead of just pouring it into a glass baking dish lined with wax paper (which is how I did the second batch and what I would actually recommend doing with this recipe). The fudge doesn’t harden like some fudges; it stays pretty pliable – which can make it hard to get out of the wrappers.
I added some fun rainbow sprinkles to give it a little carnival color pop, printed some circle circus cupcake toppers, and arranged them on a tray around Reginald the Fancy Elephant.
Working with office supplies, Reginald’s stand is a Dollar Store bucket, that I usually keep pens in, with a paper circle and star, and his top hat was printed on our no-color printer. He now lives on the cubicle divider between my desk and my neighbors among the jungle that is my office plant.
We’ve grown rather fond of him.