A Knit, Crochet & Craft Addict

Fudge...it's only taken me almost 10 years to get it to set right and today I did it my way (I think that's a song). I finally got it to look like this at the first stage where you melt all the ingredients into the sauce pan and let it get to a certain temperature.

So far so good. They are the famous last words! I poured it into two non stick but slightly oiled tins and left it out to set. Did it heck! This is what it looked like at first

The colour is a bit pastie and there are walnuts in one tin and plain fudge in the other. I bashed the walnuts to make smaller and added directly to the tins. Well, as I said before it didn't set so I got the saucepan out again and thought sod it, I am doing it my way. I put it all back into the saucepan and boiled the hell out of it (I think I may not have had it reach the softball stage before and because I don't have a thermometer, I guessed it).

Can you see the colour has got darker, so I got a cold tea plate from my rack and poured a little of it onto it. Hey presto, it only set straight away. I tipped the plate to its side and it didn't go nowhere. So tip 1. The mixture gets very thick whilst simmering and darkens and I used a wooden spoon this time. Tip 2. Boil the hell out of it but use a big big saucepan and then simmer it whilst stirring with a wooden spoon on occasion. Tip 3. Slightly grease the tin and put your walnuts or fruit etc into the tin. Tip 4.Leave it alone on the worktop. It should set within a few minutes but don't touch it yet. Leave it a good 20 minutes. Do the wobble test and it shouldn't move at all. That's when you can get a knife to cut it into the pieces you want but still leaving it in the tin to cool. I on the otherhand, didn't do that and I started cutting it into pieces as soon as it was cold and some of it went crumbly and other bits kept it shape. The fudge with the walnuts tended to be the crumbliest and the plain fudge kept its shape when I cut it. As you can see from this photo, the plain fudge is on top and look's lovely.

The pieces are mishapen but then again, so am I so who cares. I did another 6k jog this morning and intend to do another one tomorrow so that's my excuse for eating fudge and some egg and bacon for dinner tonight. At least now I know where I went wrong last time but am not sure if I will do another batch...we will see. If anyone has got any 'methods' of cooking fudge, please let me know because I would love to make some perfect and give as gifts at christmas. Bye for now.