Now this fudge is a bit like butter tablet (tooth achingly sweet Scottish confection) not the gooey creamy stuff. Sort of grainy in a creamy sort of way.
It is the perfect activity for wet afternoons, but hold the kids on this. Grown up hot stuff. (Have kid friendly sweet stuff in the pipeline though, don't panic)
Some points:
1. you're gonna need a heavy based saucepan for this. The sort that if you dropped it on your toe would require a trip to A&E. It's essential, I'm afraid. It will prevent the stuff from burning. I use my Le Creuset casserole for this (in fact, rather revealingly, I use it more for fudge than casseroles) *the shame*
2. use proper vanilla extract please.
3. I'm adding nuts to mine. Pecans and walnuts bashed with a rolling pin. You could leave them out, of course.
4. I use full cream milk, or why bother.
5. golden caster sugar will melt/dissolve more easily than granulated. Fair trade would be good (and you can feel morally superior when guzzling it down later)
Start by melting it all together on a lowish heat, but leave the vanilla out for the time being. Bit of stirring here and there. You could multitask this with tea drinking and getting a tin ready. Brownie tin size and greased with a little butter. Also get a little bowl of cold water, about half full and put to one side.
Like the jam, make sure all the sugar has dissolved/melting; check by feeling the back of the spoon. When that's done then turn the heat up. At this point you will have to put the cup of tea down and stir. Sorry.
Boil it for 15 mins (maybe more), stirring a lot of the time and then take it off the heat - you need a steady boil for this. You will notice a lot of the moisture will have evaporated off and it's thickened up. In fact, rather than boiling up the side of pan it will be a bit like melted cheese and will decrease in volume.
Take a spoonful (small) and drop it in the water. Leave it for a min and then give it a squeeze. If it is a 'soft ball' then stop boiling. If not, back on the heat. *Science bit: the setting point for this is 112-115C for nerdlingers with their own thermometers and sugar concentration will be 85%*
If it is ready then walk away and leave it for 5 mins. Have a brew perhaps and come back. At this point add the vanilla (sizzle), and in my case, nuts. This is a critical bit. Beat that sucker until it starts getting really thick and a bit grainy (about 5 mins) You don't want it so thick you can't get it out of the pan though. Think consistency of cake mixture - stiff cake mixture. If it turns into sand then you've gone too far (in which case, open the gin)
Hoik it out of the pan and into the tin. It will be craggy - take time in trying to make it smooth. It it is cool enough, press it down with your fingers.
You can see from mine that I didn't fill the whole tin. I wanted tall chunks rather than paving slabs. Mark out squares whilst still warm to aid the cutting process.
Leave to cool.
Then gorge yourself into a hyperglycaemic coma. I made double quantities so some will be going to my Monster in Law to bribe some babysitting out of her.
Evil laughter.....
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