Food porn -- fudge
Nov. 14th, 2007 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesOh yes, fudge...
In the comments in my post linking to an essay on the crystallisation science of fudge,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soshoni posted her recipe, and I promised that I'd post mine. And then got distracted...
So, fudge. This is a very simple recipe, taken from an ancient Women's Institute cookbook. It's also from memory, because I've been making it so many years now that I don't look at the recipe, I just do it, and the recipe book isn't in the same country as me at present. I suspect that there are really, really obvious things I will miss out...
2 pounds of sugar
One tin of sweetened condensed milk
small cup of milk
1 ts vanilla
2 knobs of butter
butter for greasing pan and trays
Grease with butter the tray you're going to be laying the fudge in when it's done. Or do it later during the stirring stage, but don't leave it until the last minute, because you won't have time once the mix hits the soft ball stage.
Grease a large saucepan with butter. The saucepan must be large enough to allow the fudge to boil up with plenty of room, because the mix will expand to at least three times its starting volume while it's boiling, and hot fudge mix spits.
Mix the sugar, milk and condensed milk together in the pan. [ETA: knob of butter as well, you'll need a second knob later.] Heat gently and stir with a wooden spoon until all the sugar has dissolved, scraping down the sides of the pan if necessary. You need to have the sugar completely dissolved before bringing the mix to the boil, or the crystals will act as nucleation sites for crystallisation later. A very low simmer is a good temperature for this.
Once the sugar has dissolved, turn the heat up to bring the mix to a slow boil. The recipe book said that you don't need to stir it that often, but I find that it needs to be stirred fairly often or it burns. If you have to stand over it anyway, you might as well keep stirring. For the next twenty to forty minutes. It's a good time to plan the next chapter in the book...
As the mix thickens, test it every so often by dropping a small amount from the spoon into a bowl of water. When the mix forms a soft ball that holds together, it's fudge. That's the way I do it, because I didn't have a sugar thermometer available [mumble] years ago. Using a sugar thermometer is good too, but I have no idea what the actual temperature is supposed to be, should yours not have "soft ball" explicitly marked on it.
As soon as it hits soft ball, take it off the heat. Yes, that means that if you're using an electric stove or an Aga you take it off the ring and put it on something cold, like an unused ring. It is done, and if you leave it on even residual heat, it will be no more, it will be a dead fudge mix. Or at least it'll be toffee, which isn't what you wanted.
At this point I diverge slightly from the original recipe, which didn't go in for a really complicated cooling down routine, but did involve a knob of butter, a short cooling period, and a folding in of vanilla essence. I can't remember what order they're supposed to go in and the timings, because nowadays I'm usually finishing the fudge while surrounded by small children who have been driven beyond endurance by the smell of cooking fudge, and are unable to grasp "stay out of the kitchen, this is *dangerous*" for more than three milliseconds. So it's chuck in the butter, beat like fury with the wooden spoon for a minute or so as the butter melts over the top, chuck in the vanilla essence and beat like fury until I can feel the mix start to thicken, shout at the children to get out from under my feet, and then pour it into the greased trays. It spits when the vanilla goes in, so be careful.
The point of all the beating like fury is to get your super-saturated sugar solution to crystallise rapidly, with very fine crystals. If you beat it hard while it's setting, you'll break up the crystal clumps before they can form large crystals. There are other ways of achieving this, such as the cooling routine in that essay, or by tipping it out on a large marble slab to chill it fast, and working it until it's set. This recipe produces a very firm but fine-textured fudge if you get it right.
Personally, I prefer real vanilla essence to the synthetic stuff. The difference in the end product is noticeable if you're an adult supertaster, thogh even the synthetic stuff is pleasant enough. But if you're turning it out in quantity for small children, they don't seem to care...
You will note that there is no cream in this recipe. If you want to make it richer, you can, but remember that sugar doesn't dissolve all that well in cream. If you substitute cream for some of the milk, you're effectively swapping oil for some of the water content of the ingredients, and you may end up with not enough water to properly dissolve the sugar. You get a lumpy, crystalline fudge instead. Add cream as an extra to the milk rather than instead of the milk, and start with a small quantity the first time.
No, I have no idea how to add chocolate. This is a fudge recipe, not a chocolate fudge recipe.
ETA: For years I always used white sugar, that being what I had. It makes a nice fudge, but you can also use an unrefined sugar, which gives a different colour and can give a different flavour. If you use different sugars, remember to adjust for the starting colour when using the colour of the syrup as a guide to when it's done. Even if you *do* think about this ahead of time, it's easy to forget by the end. Yes, I did find this out the hard way.
In the comments in my post linking to an essay on the crystallisation science of fudge,
soshoni posted her recipe, and I promised that I'd post mine. And then got distracted...So, fudge. This is a very simple recipe, taken from an ancient Women's Institute cookbook. It's also from memory, because I've been making it so many years now that I don't look at the recipe, I just do it, and the recipe book isn't in the same country as me at present. I suspect that there are really, really obvious things I will miss out...
2 pounds of sugar
One tin of sweetened condensed milk
small cup of milk
1 ts vanilla
2 knobs of butter
butter for greasing pan and trays
Grease with butter the tray you're going to be laying the fudge in when it's done. Or do it later during the stirring stage, but don't leave it until the last minute, because you won't have time once the mix hits the soft ball stage.
Grease a large saucepan with butter. The saucepan must be large enough to allow the fudge to boil up with plenty of room, because the mix will expand to at least three times its starting volume while it's boiling, and hot fudge mix spits.
Mix the sugar, milk and condensed milk together in the pan. [ETA: knob of butter as well, you'll need a second knob later.] Heat gently and stir with a wooden spoon until all the sugar has dissolved, scraping down the sides of the pan if necessary. You need to have the sugar completely dissolved before bringing the mix to the boil, or the crystals will act as nucleation sites for crystallisation later. A very low simmer is a good temperature for this.
Once the sugar has dissolved, turn the heat up to bring the mix to a slow boil. The recipe book said that you don't need to stir it that often, but I find that it needs to be stirred fairly often or it burns. If you have to stand over it anyway, you might as well keep stirring. For the next twenty to forty minutes. It's a good time to plan the next chapter in the book...
As the mix thickens, test it every so often by dropping a small amount from the spoon into a bowl of water. When the mix forms a soft ball that holds together, it's fudge. That's the way I do it, because I didn't have a sugar thermometer available [mumble] years ago. Using a sugar thermometer is good too, but I have no idea what the actual temperature is supposed to be, should yours not have "soft ball" explicitly marked on it.
As soon as it hits soft ball, take it off the heat. Yes, that means that if you're using an electric stove or an Aga you take it off the ring and put it on something cold, like an unused ring. It is done, and if you leave it on even residual heat, it will be no more, it will be a dead fudge mix. Or at least it'll be toffee, which isn't what you wanted.
At this point I diverge slightly from the original recipe, which didn't go in for a really complicated cooling down routine, but did involve a knob of butter, a short cooling period, and a folding in of vanilla essence. I can't remember what order they're supposed to go in and the timings, because nowadays I'm usually finishing the fudge while surrounded by small children who have been driven beyond endurance by the smell of cooking fudge, and are unable to grasp "stay out of the kitchen, this is *dangerous*" for more than three milliseconds. So it's chuck in the butter, beat like fury with the wooden spoon for a minute or so as the butter melts over the top, chuck in the vanilla essence and beat like fury until I can feel the mix start to thicken, shout at the children to get out from under my feet, and then pour it into the greased trays. It spits when the vanilla goes in, so be careful.
The point of all the beating like fury is to get your super-saturated sugar solution to crystallise rapidly, with very fine crystals. If you beat it hard while it's setting, you'll break up the crystal clumps before they can form large crystals. There are other ways of achieving this, such as the cooling routine in that essay, or by tipping it out on a large marble slab to chill it fast, and working it until it's set. This recipe produces a very firm but fine-textured fudge if you get it right.
Personally, I prefer real vanilla essence to the synthetic stuff. The difference in the end product is noticeable if you're an adult supertaster, thogh even the synthetic stuff is pleasant enough. But if you're turning it out in quantity for small children, they don't seem to care...
You will note that there is no cream in this recipe. If you want to make it richer, you can, but remember that sugar doesn't dissolve all that well in cream. If you substitute cream for some of the milk, you're effectively swapping oil for some of the water content of the ingredients, and you may end up with not enough water to properly dissolve the sugar. You get a lumpy, crystalline fudge instead. Add cream as an extra to the milk rather than instead of the milk, and start with a small quantity the first time.
No, I have no idea how to add chocolate. This is a fudge recipe, not a chocolate fudge recipe.
ETA: For years I always used white sugar, that being what I had. It makes a nice fudge, but you can also use an unrefined sugar, which gives a different colour and can give a different flavour. If you use different sugars, remember to adjust for the starting colour when using the colour of the syrup as a guide to when it's done. Even if you *do* think about this ahead of time, it's easy to forget by the end. Yes, I did find this out the hard way.