Fudge 2

I grabbed the internet and had a search for peanut butter fudge. Most of the recipes seemed to use marshmallow or the microwave, neither of which were solutions I was interested in.

Time for Harold McGee. As suspected he had a whole chapter about sweets and in it was a nice bit of theory about fudges & fondants. This made me think a straight forward substitution of peanut butter for butter would work, a little more thinking led me to the conclusion a mixture of the 2 would be better, so half & half it was.

Next time it'll be 75% butter 25% peanut butter. There was one big problem, peanut butter doesn't lubricate as well as actual butter & one small problem, the end product is very rich indeed.Still people are enjoying it so not a complete disaster.

Fudge

  I guess most reasonable people are fond of fudge. Its been my culinary bête noir for some time. Every attempt I've made has resulted in some semi-inedible beige sludge. However I saw a cheap digital cooking thermometer the other day, and instantly bought it (C'mon "meat probe" who'd pass that up ?). I've used the soft/hard ball/crack system succesful for treacle toffee (though my gran taught me how to make that) and cinder toffee (Again, pouring soda into boiling sugar what's not to like ?).

The recipe I found was for a butter & milk fudge, with a half carton of double cream getting ever closer to the end of its life I went for the richer option of 1/3rd cream 2/3rds milk. Also because of my previous fudge failings I refused to use a real vanila pod and went with essance.

It turned out as fudge, in colour and in texture which is apretty good start.You'll notice I'm not mentioning flavour in that list, because that's the weakpoint of this fudge. The fudge tastes more custardy than fudgey, not in an unpleasant way but not the rich fudge flavour I like.

Anyway its been a hit with various friends and volunteers, so they've asked about more (Especially with christmas looming). So I'm looking at richer recipes (maple syrup & real vanilla next time)