All About Fudge

A Guest post, by a talented composer of sweets:

ALL ABOUT FUDGE

In common with caramel and toffee, fudge has three ingredients - sugar, water, and fat. Milk is fat and water. Golden syrup is sugar and water. Condensed milk is all three, which is why you can make caramel out of it without adding anything else. So it's pretty simple. Simple is not the same as easy.

Sugar, water

The sugar-to-water ratio makes your caramel more or less runny. Equal parts by volume gives you simple syrup.

Sugar, water, fat

Adding fat (butter, unless you don't eat cow-juice, in which case probably coconut oil behaves the same way) changes the way the finished thing behaves. Fudge breaks into chunks, while toffee stretches a bit before breaking. Those gorgeous long crisp filaments that simple syrup makes if you cook it golden? That's what happens with no fat at all. It's similar to the way that shortcrust pastry breaks while bread dough stretches out. It's called shortening for a reason*

Sugar, water, fat, heat

Heat alters organic things. Proteins denature, and sugars caramelise. Applying heat for longer does two things - it drives off water, making a thicker finished product, and it caramelises the sugar. The colour changes to gold and then to brown, and the taste deepens and gets richer and more complex. Just don't go too far and let it burn.

Sugar, water, fat, heat, stirring

When sugar is liquid it is very, very hot. When it cools it wants to crystallise again, but in a smooth pan of itself that's difficult. When you stir, you start off lots of little crystalline nubbles that grow more crystals. So the whole thing gets that good fudgey texture. If you add chopped nuts or raisins, you effectively make the stirring stirrier so you needn't do it for as long.

The recipe, at last

1 lb demerara sugar

2 oz butter

1/2 pint milk or cream or a mixture of milk and cream

A few drops of vanilla extract

Line a tin with baking paper. Put all the ingredients except the vanilla in a large pot. Melt them over a low heat. Gently increase the heat until it starts boiling, then reduce the heat again so it simmers. Now, it'll rise up in a huge froth of bubbles which can be a little alarming, but don't worry; it's supposed to be doing that. Keep stirring it gently, every now and then, so the bottom doesn't burn.

After ten minutes or so, start testing it (it could take another twenty minutes to be done, though, so don't get impatient here.) Now, this is the point where the recipe books start talking about the soft ball stage, and I am here to tell you that there is no such thing.

If you're of a sensitive disposition, skip this paragraph and buy a sugar thermometer instead.

Testing fudge for done-ness results in something remarkably like a poo. Early on - before enough water has been boiled off - the stuff will disperse in the cup of water like the kebab you should have known better than to eat in the first place. If you overcook it, the fudge will hit the bottom of the cup in a scatter of hard little nuggets. And when you see in the bottom of the cup a smooth, comfortable turd shape - a poo you wouldn't mind having yourself, and don't pretend not to know what I mean - then your fudge is done. If you're not sure, reach in and gather it up with your fingers. It should hold together and feel soft almost chewy when you eat it, assuming you still want to do such a thing.

Or just wait until a sugar thermometer reads between 112 and 116 C.

Anyway, when you've arrived at this happy state of affairs, take the fudge off the heat, add a dash of vanilla, and stir like a maniac. At first it'll seem as if you're just sloshing liquid around for no good reason, but then it will thicken and start to look creamy. The track left by the spoon will be slow to close up. At this point you can pour it into a tin and let it set. By all means lick the pan, but for goodness' sake let it cool first.

If it doesn't set properly, don't worry. Just use it as delicious caramel sauce and next time, cook it a bit longer or stir it a bit more. If it sets too much and is a crumbly mess, bash it up some more and sprinkle it on icecream, and next time stop cooking a bit sooner or stir a bit more gently.

* I have no idea whether this is the real reason it's called shortening, or if there's any relation between the effect butter has on pastry and the effect it has on fudge. It could all be a string of coincidences.