![]() Take off the heat and beat in the vanilla and salt with a wooden spoon, then continue beating until the fudge has thickened and lost its shine. Line a tin about 23x23cm with greaseproof paper.īring to a simmer over a medium-low heat without stirring and cook, stirring occasionally until it reaches 116C, stirring more regularly after it reaches 100C and turning down the heat if it begins to catch. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup and cream in a medium, high-sided heavy-based pan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Photograph: Felicity Cloake/for the Guardianġ00g butter 550g demerara sugar 200g golden syrup 350ml double cream 1 tsp vanilla extract ¼-½ tsp sea salt flakes View image in fullscreen Felicity Cloake’s perfect fudge. They’re not expensive, and they’ll work forever (though be careful when washing as they can be delicate). Lots of recipes give advice about how to achieve this without a sugar thermometer (dropping a little into a glass of cold water until it reaches a pliable consistency), but this is a fiddly and inexact science, so I’d recommend investing in a sugar thermometer. Even Hope and Greenwood and Carnation’s 118C is a bit harder than I had expect from a fudge – my testers and I agree that Roddas have hit the sweet spot at 116C: firm enough to hold its shape, soft enough to melt in the mouth. The difference comes in temperature, which ranges from 113C from Behan, which gives a very soft, almost fondant-like result, to Aikens’s 121C, which is brittle and chewy, more like a hard caramel than a fudge. (Covering the pan, as Roddas suggest, works fine, but feels a bit scary to me I prefer to keep my molten sugar where I can see it.) Photograph: Felicity Cloake/Guardian The methodĪll the recipes I try start in much the same way, dissolving the sugar and dairy together over heat, bringing the resulting mixture to the boil, and then letting it simmer until it reaches the desired setting temperature. View image in fullscreen Tom Aikens uses a high temperature to produce a more brittle fudge. ![]() But, as butter and clotted cream could prove a fatal combination, a downgrade to double seems just what the doctor ordered. Let’s be honest, everything’s better with butter. My only complaint is that the flavour is a little too sweet and rich, which I admit may sound ridiculous, but in a side-by-side comparison, we preferred those recipes using butter as well. In fact, the Roddas recipe proves pretty popular soft, smooth and rich, it’s classic Cornish seaside stuff. Despite a weird complaint that it tastes “meaty”, I happen to like it, but not as much as the clotted cream which plays an unsurprisingly large part in the Roddas recipe, or the double variety in Aikens’s fudge. Hope and Greenwood plump for the nostalgic boiled flavour of evaporated milk instead, an ingredient that has so far failed to reinvent itself for a more decadent age. Some recipes cleverly combine the two ingredients in one big hit of nauseatingly delicious condensed milk, which makes their fudge taste distinctly like white chocolate – not that there’s anything wrong with this, but it’s not the classic flavour I’m after. The second, and most important, ingredient in fudge is fat. Photograph: Felicity Cloake/Guardian The dairy View image in fullscreen Roddas’s fudge goes all out with clotted cream. Clearly feeling two types of sugar aren’t quite enough, Aikens finishes his fudge with an infinitesimal amount of icing sugar, for, no doubt, very sound Michelin-starred reasons which I am unable to fathom. Personally, I prefer the slightly more subtle caramel notes of the first here.Īikens and Roddas both also add some sugar syrup – boring glucose in the former case, ambrosial golden in the latter – which makes their fudge wonderfully smooth as opposed to the slightly gritty, sandy texture of the Carnation and Hope and Greenwood recipes, which, though undoubtedly pleasing, is more reminiscent of Scottish tablet. If you want to keep things simple, like candy pros Mrs Hope and Mr Greenwood, the folk from Rodda’s clotted cream and Michelin-star chef Tom Aikens, this can be caster or ordinary white granulated, but given sugar plays such a large part, the demerara suggested by the Carnation condensed milk tin or the light muscovado used by Ren Behan in Jamie magazine will give a more interesting flavour. Lest anyone was under any illusions in this department, the main ingredient of fudge is sugar – that’s why you can feel your teeth wince in protest as you reach for yet another piece. Photograph: Felicity Cloake/Guardian The sugar View image in fullscreen Carnation’s fudge recipe stipulates demerara sugar.
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