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Friday, July 15th, 2005

🦋 Fudge

Tonight was phase 1 of our candy-making weekend; we made chocolate fudge. Here is a recipe, from Woodstock Candy, a fine place to get fudge if you're in Ulster County:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups granulated white sugar
• 1 cup cream
• 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 1 tablespoon butter

Combine sugar and cream and cook over moderate heat. When this becomes very hot, add the chocolate. Stir constantly. Cook until mixture reaches soft-ball stage (238 degrees). Remove from heat and add butter. Cool slightly, then mix until fudge starts to thicken. Transfer to a buttered tin. Cut into diamond-shaped pieces before fudge hardens completely.

Right now it is in its buttered tin hardening; soon I will go down and cut it into small diamond pieces. (And some larger diamond pieces also, which will not get dipped in chocolate but might get sprinkled with confectioner's suger instead.)

Sylvia helped with the measuring and mixing but got bored and wandered off during the boiling which I did not want to let her help with because of the high temperatures involved. (Boiling fudge is a grueling procedure in the hot weather.) I am perennially too shy about boiling candy though, in that I shut off the heat the moment my candy thermometer touched the 238-degree "soft ball" line, indeed it may still have been a degree shy of the line, when I think it would actually have been better to err on the high side of the line. I have done the same thing with caramel and had it not harden as fully as I wanted. But we'll see.

After we made the fudge (and Sylvia's interest in the process returned, when there was suddenly the prospect of fudgey spatulas to lick), it was time to get ready for bed, so we came upstairs. Tonight's section of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (chapters 16 and 17) coincidentally included some talk about fudge-making, which was exciting.

Update: Well the tentatitive upshot is, I probably did not heat it up enough (as reckoned above), and I definitely poured it into too large a pan. The pan I used is 6" square, and the fudge is not tall enough in it. I should probably have used a loaf pan. As far as not having heated it up enough, at this point after 3 hours sitting on the counter, it is...soft. No way around it, it's soft. And I sampled a bit of it, it was quite grainy. Which I think if the sugar had gotten hot enough, it would not be. So I am putting it in the fridge now, maybe it will get hard enough in there; but I think it will be grainy regardless. And too short.

posted evening of Friday, July 15th, 2005: Respond
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Saturday, July 16th, 2005

🦋 Fudge part II, Marshmallows part I

This morning we cut up (and sampled) the fudge, and cooked the marshmallows. Verdict on the fudge is, I should definitely have cooked it hotter than I did. It gets pretty hard in the fridge but softens right up at room temp. (Which is fairly high right now.) So the plan is, to keep it in the fridge until we're ready to dip them, and figure once the chocolate sets around them, they can soften without many bad consequences. And yes, the texture is definitely too grainy. But this is not a make-or-break thing; Sylvia is still quite enthusiastic about the results.

Marshmallows are fun to make! I think they are going to come out a fair bit drier than commercial marshmallows but this is not (in my view) a negative. Here is the recipe (taken from Food Reference):

• 2 tablespoons of gelatin
• 1/4 cup of water
• 2 cups of white sugar
• 1 cup of water
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 3/4 cup of mixed cornstarch and powdered sugar (1/4 cup of cornstarch, 1/2 cup of powdered sugar)

Soak the gelatin in 1/4 of a cup of cold water in a small bowl and set aside to swell for 10 minutes.

In a large saucepan pour the sugar and second measure of water. Gently dissolve the sugar over a low heat stirring constantly.

Add the swollen gelatin and dissolve.

Raise the temperature and bring to the boil. Boil steadily but not vigorously for 15 minutes without stirring. (Final temperature should be soft-ball.)

Remove from the heat and allow to cool until luke warm.

Add the vanilla extract and whisk the mixture with an electric mixer or beater until very thick and white.

Rinse an 8 inch sponge roll tin or fudge dish under water and pour the marshmallow mixture into the wet tin.

Refrigerate until set.

Cut into squares and roll in mixed cornstarch and icing sugar. (We will not be doing this since we are dipping them in chocolate instead.)

The Joy of Cooking has a slightly more complicated recipe. When you whip the syrup up into marshmallow it is a lot of fun watching it get foamy and stiff, like whipping cream but moreso.

posted morning of Saturday, July 16th, 2005: Respond
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