Alvin invented Fernald's Fireballs by accident. It all started on a rainy, "blustery" day in March. Alvin was all "flibbertyneedled" inside from a long and cold winter. Alvin, Shoie and The Pest decided to enter the Kitchenmate Appliance Company cooking contest where "YOU CAN WIN ONE OF A THOUSAND VALUABLE PRIZES". They decided to try making a candy and started randomly putting ingredients into a pan. They started out with butter, sugar, milk, corn syrup and chocolate, then proceeded to add Good Omens cereal, cinnamon, tabasco, grape Kool-Aid, more cinnamon, more tabasco, lemon-aid, more cinnamon, more tabasco, food coloring and more cinnamon and more tabasco. The resulting mess ruined the kitchen stool by acting as a sugary super-glue. When they tasted it, they just about burned their tongues off!
In the end, Alvin forgot the recipe, but won the contest:
"After they'd cleaned up the mess as well as they could, Shoie was banished from the house, and Alvin and The Pest were sent to their rooms to "think about" ruining the kitchen stool. Alvin went to his desk, took out a pencil, and sat there staring at the contest entry blank he'd taken to his room with him. He had to admit it wasn't very good candy, but maybe somebody would like it. He began filling in the form.
'Name of candy...' was the first line. Alvin sat deep in thought for a long moment. Finally he licked the tip of the pencil, and carefully printed 'Fernald's Fireballs.'
The next line said 'Ingredients...' Here he was lost; he couldn't possibly remember everything they'd put in. He wrote down a few of the ingredients, and after each of them wrote 'one cup' or 'three teaspoons' or 'two pinches, to taste,' which was a phrase he'd picked up from one of his mother's cookbooks. He couldn't remember the name of the orange stuff in the strange little bottle, so he left that out.
Finally, under 'Cooking
Instructions...' he wrote: 'Let simmer over low heat to soft-ball stage,
stirring constantly. Then put the pan in cold water and beat it -
I mean the candy, not the pan. Can be rolled into balls or wrapped
around sucker sticks.' He thought for moment then smiled to himself
and added a final line, 'Either way, it has a very unusual taste.'"
