Maple and Walnut Fudge - It's Quick and Easy !

I've blogged my fudge recipe a few times before - it's quick, easy and very versatile. Just change a few small things and you can create any flavour you wish. I promise - this is far nicer than shop bought fudge.

It keeps a fair amount of time too - 2 > 3 weeks in a tupperware box in the fridge. I've never tried not refrigerating it - so no idea if it will survive non refrigerated for more than a few days.

The main thing is : DON'T FORGET TO STIR ! You do need to stir this stuff constantly or it will burn on the bottom of the pan in the blink of an eye.... 

INGREDIENTS

2 cups (250ml liquid volume) of sugar

1/2 cup of evaporated milk

125g salted butter (or unsalted plus a pinch of salt)

1/4 cup of maple syrup 

100g of marshmallows

125g white chocolate (chopped)

1/2 cup of chopped "add-ins" (in this case walnuts) - plus extra for the top

Put the sugar, evaporated milk, maple syrup, butter and marshmallows in a large heavy based pan. Do make sure it is a large pan - and preferably non stick - as this stuff can and will bubble volcanically ! There is nothing worse than getting hot sugar on your skin - it can inflict some rather serious burns.

Bring slowly to a rolling boil. As soon as a gentle rolling boil is achieved, time for 5 minutes.

Stir constantly - there will be some carmelized brown bits come to the surface. This will not appear in the finished product. If you stop stirring, it will catch and burn however.

As soon as the 5 minutes of boiling is up, stir in the chocolate and add ins until the chocolate is melted.

Immediately pour into a 9" square silicone bakeware pan or alternatively a 12 sponge finger mould as I used in the video and put some extra walnuts on top.

Leave to cool before slicing.

For other variations, try milk or dark chocolate, 3/4 cup of evaporated milk plus some vanilla, rosewater or other flavour extract. For alcoholic versions - use 1/2 cup of evaporated milk and 1/4 cup of alcohol (ie Bailey's, Malibu, Whisky, Cointreau, etc). For add-ins..... pretty much any dried fruit and nuts work, broken cookies, candy / sweets such as maltesers, m&m's etc.

Have fun creating and let me know what combinations you make !

Sarah-Jane Nash, www.siliconemoulds.com - September 2012

Soft and Chewy Caramels

Well - last night was a late one. My dishwasher was away camping (lol). Oliver was asleep ....and I was skiddling around in the kitchen. This was one of two projects - but I've yet to do the photos of the other, so that will need to wait.

I've been meaning to try making caramels for a while and it's one of those things I've just never got round to doing.

The recipe for this came from Allrecipes.com and was posted by Barbara. There were lots of positive and quite a number of negative views - a good number of people seemed to struggle to get the set they required. I boiled mine to 245 deg - it was perhaps a little too soft. I'll go a couple of deg more next time. I also reduced the butter content - so my tweaked version is below.

Ingredients

2 cups white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup golden syrup / corn syrup

1 cup evaporated milk

1 pint double cream

200g butter (salted)

3 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Add all ingredients to a very large, deep pot and bring to a steady boil. You will need a sugar thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature

Boil for approx 45 mins until the temperature reached 250deg (firm ball). I took mine off at 245 deg. My caramel set to soft and chewy - but was perhaps a smidging too soft.

I stupidly forgot to position the pan clip on my thermometer - so it's in the caramel ! I therefore used a silicone food rope / tie instead to rope it to the pot handle to keep it in place. Such handly little things. I use them for resealing various bags of nuts and dried fruit, bouquet garni as well as to hold together stuffed meat and fish.

Once ready, I poured my caramel into a silicone lasagne tray and a silicone 8" square brownie / fudge pan . Neither were greased. The original recipe calls for a 12 x 15" tray, well greased.

The next morning (or should we say 5 hours later...) I went to take my caramel from the moulds. I needed to run a blunt table knife round the top edge to free the caramel from the mould. I then inverted the mould and literally peeled out the caramel.

WARNING - this recipe makes a serious amount of caramel. If you cut it into large 1" square chunks, you will get approx 150 pieces. A 1" chunk is a substantial sized serving of this stuff.

I had enough to make 3 x gift boxes full, plus 4 gift bags (each bag had approx 15 bits) and more left over. This is ideal to do a good big batch for little home made Christmas gifts or hampers.

I made my gift box and bag above using some Kanban Butterfly card, Papermania Felt butterflies, silver flower brads, stick on jewels and some pink ribbon. I cut the heart out of the front and put some acetate behind

. For the boxes, I have a Crafters Companion Top Score Board which marks the lines and creates the box tops and bases to slot together. It's an invaluable bit of plastic !

Here is another of the gift boxes (click the image to enlarge) with more Kanban card, a stenciled butterfly, some flower embelishments and an enamelled brad.

Sarah-Jane Nash - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ / http://www.naturalheating.co.uk/  

Fabulous Fudge - 5 minute fix !

I've been promising to post fudge recipes for a little while now. Problem is, in doing so - it means I have to make some to take photographs ! I've finally made some and am going to send it home for my parents and brother to enjoy.

Sitting in our house, it's too easy to munch.... and I want to cut back on sweet stuff rather than increase.

Anyway, we had a HUGE delivery of new silicone moulds yesterday - so I'm like a kid at Christmas. Of course, I've also got to make things in all these new mould designs in order to show them off.

Fudge is very very easy and relatively inexpensive to make. Unlike Scottish tablet, it only takes 5 minutes to cook instead of 20  > 25, and 2 minutes to beat instead of 15+ !

In a traditional bakeware cake / brownie tin - it's hell to get out. It doesnt matter how much you butter it. All my tins have loads of big dents in the bottom where I've been whacking them trying to get it to come out. When I've failed, I've often poured boiling water over the base and have burnt myself a fair few times. I've been waiting and WAITING for the right type of silicone mould for making fudge and this really revolutionises fudge making

Fudge is very versatile and it's so easy to make different flavours and textures. We'll start with the basis recipe....

You will need a large, heavy based saucepan and a WELL buttered 8" square tin - or an 8" square silicone mould (unbuttered). It's also VERY important that you prepare your ingredients in advance for this recipe so everything is to hand. When you need them - there is NO time to spare !

Ingredients

125g butter
3/4 cup of evaporated milk

2 cups of granulated sugar

12 marshmallows

200g white chocolate - chopped

1 cup of dry additions - ie fruit / nuts
2 tsp vanilla extract

Put the butter, evaporated milk, sugar and marshmallows into your saucepan. Melt together on a medium heat and bring to the boil - stirring constantly.

Set your timer - or check your watch. Keep at a boil for EXACTLY 5 minutes if you want a soft fudge leaves teeth marks as you bite in. This is how I prefer it.... However, if you prefer it crumbly as pictured above, boil for 7 minutes. Don't worry about darker coloured flecks rising up. These disappear totally later. Just don't forget that you need to constantly stir as soon the ingredients are all melted.

Take it off the heat and immediately add and beat in the chocolate and any dry additions. Quickly pour in to your square silicone tray mould or tin, scraping as much as you can fron the sides of the pan.

Leave to cool. I like to refrigerate overnight after cooling before cutting into squares.

See how cleanly it pops out ?

Ok - so that's vanilla fudge recipe. With or without added fruit and nuts.

There are loads of other things you can do with it.....

Flavour ideas :

cranberry and macadamia
maple and walnut (reduce sugar a little and add some maple syrup)
blackforest fudge - sub bitter chocolate for the white chocolate and use dried cherries and a splash of liquer.
coffee, hazlenut and raisin (pictured) - reduce evap. milk and add a couple of tbsp of camp coffee

baileys irish liquer - with or without raisins. Again - just adjust evap milk and add liquer
strawberry shortcake double decker - milk chocolate and broken shortbread biscuits in bottom fudge layer. Strawberry flavoured fudge topped with mini marshmallows on top.

Minty duo - dark chocolate fudge base with mint flavouring, white chocolate mint flavour for the top, sprinkled with crystalised sugar

Sarah-Jane Nash, http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - 8" square flexible silicone mould for fudge making