Well, where to start? What's not to like about fudge? And homemade fudge has bells on (well not literally) and would make a great homemade gift. It's easy to make, has few ingredients, looks impressive and... am I selling it to you yet?
And then I remembered that during a recent tidy of a dresser drawer, among the many muffin, cupcake and petit four cases I found some edible star glitter, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to use some of that. I was pretty sure that I had a tin of evaporated milk in the cupboard too - I did, it was lurking under a tin of pilchards, like you do...
So with the sultanas, currants and raisins soaking in some bourbon (MOH is liberally feeding brandy to our Christmas puddings so I wasn't going to interfere with that, and our bottle of dark rum from Barbados last year, isn't opened yet) I weighed out the sugar and butter and added this to the evaporated milk and started to stir.
Now, if you're rather partial to more than one piece of fudge then I urge you to make this recipe! I was shocked at how few, but how much of each ingredient I was adding to the pan. This may sound odd but I'd never really considered the sugar content in fudge before, I just knew it was sweet and I liked it! I can quite happily pop square after square into my mouth. Perhaps this means I'm a visual person but seeing the quantities in front of me gave me a surprise - I guess I'd not considered it before - and while I will still eat fudge maybe I'll savour it just a bit more...
I don't have a sugar thermometer and boiled the fudgey liquid for ten minutes, before attempting the 'soft ball' test described in the recipe. Having not made fudge before I wasn't sure if mine was right or not - I gave it a few moments more and then decided to move on to the next stage of leaving it to cool without stirring for 5 minutes, which was harder than I expected it to be!
However after 5 minutes of peeking into the saucepan to observe any activity (there wasn't much, it just cooled) came ten minutes of a good arm workout! In went the dark chocolate and for ten minutes I was beating it until it was dark and glossy - and it was easy to notice the change. The hardest part was trying not to incorporate any sugar crystals from around the edge of the pan, and I'm not sure I managed 100% but, oh well...
Adding the fruit, spices and the remains of the bourbon I poured it into my prepared tin and wondered if it would set. I added some of my edible starry glitter at this stage as I wanted it to set alongside the fudge.
And it did set - phew - look at how the colour's changed, it's on the softer side of set but is still good. And yes I couldn't wait to try a small slice...
It was delicious - actually there's still some left so make that, it is delicious. I've packaged some up too so it looks a bit fancy and it might, just might be given as gifts this year...
And do you know what? That tin of evaporated milk I found, well it was a large one so because I loved the first batch so much and because it was so easy to make I made another batch. This time I altered the recipe slightly replacing white chocolate for the dark chocolate, glacé cherries for the fruit and some white rum for the va va voom! I'm also trying to think what other flavours I could make, what's your favourite fudge flavour?