Food porn

[julesjones]

Via pecunium, a blog post on the crystallisation science behind making fudge. The recipe the blogger links to is possibly not of great relevance to the .uk people, as it's American and thus involves corn syrup, but the post itself is well worth a read:

http://www.headblender.com/joe/blog/archives/2005/02/

ETA: Oh, and pecunium's recipe for an oxtail galantine, which I will link here so that I don't lose it.

http://pecunium.livejournal.com/281882.html

Comments

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

Hi! I like your books! XD

Interesting info about the fudge, but corn syrup is just ewww. Why would someone do that to poor, innocent fudge? I'm American and wouldn't do that.

I've been making fudge for years, my grandfather made the absolute best and made it with me. I don't have his exact recipe, but I've got one that's worked for me.

I deleted my original comment because I thought I'd missed something, but I just checked, and I've never let my fudge cool down before adding the rest like that person says to, and I get really good good results.

Anyways, here's my recipe again if you want to try it.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Recipe.

2 cups milk (whole milk, none of that low-fat nonsense, not for fudge)
2 cups l. brown sugar (packed)
2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder (you could use chocolate squares instead, but I find cocoa powder to be better for the texture.)
1 cup marshmallows (small ones, not large, and not mallow creme)
1 tablespoon butter (not margarine, eww.)
1 teaspoon vanilla (not extract!)
1 cup peanut butter (creamy or chunky)

The marshmallows are cheating a bit, but they're such a big help in getting a good consistency.

Cook the milk, sugars and cocoa over low heat until they ball up in water or hit about 240 on a candy thermometer.

You so have to keep stirring all the time while it's cooking. And only a wooden spoon works - whisks or metal/plastic spoons just don't work, I've never gotten my fudge to set properly using anything other than a wooden spoon. Your arm'll get tired though, this takes a while. Oh, and it's perfectly fine to stir normally during this stage - the strange stirring isn't until the next part.

Then you take it off the heat and you kinda fold and beat in the rest of the ingredients - and you have to do it fast, before the heat of the chocolate mixture really melts the butter. It's kind of an up and down, scooping stir instead of a side to side stir to mix it all together.

And then you let it sit, and you have fudge! Really good fudge.

I've never taken the peanut butter out - you'd have to check a different recipe because I'm sure it would change other things needed.

[julesjones]

Glad you like the books. :-) Interesting to see another reader on LiveJournal, as a lot of the romance readers seem to be on Yahoogroups or MySpace, and not many of the people who read my books are over here.

I'll type up my own fudge recipe later, but I'm another one who just stirs like mad with a wooden spoon to initiate setting in a super-saturated solution, which is one of the reasons why I found that recipe interesting. The one I use is a very basic sugar/milk fudge, no chocolate, which may make a difference. Adding extra fat can do odd things, as I found out the time I decided to use some left-over cream to make an extra-rich batch.