Nearly every year since 2004, we make garlic fudge. Now the old recipe was good, but I can do without having to buy evaporated milk.
Garlic Fudge
5-13 Cloves of garlic, peeled
4 Tablespoons of butter (salted or unsalted, your pick)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 Tablespoons real maple syrup (optional to retard crystallization)
1/4 tsp salt (optional)
Bring a small pan of water to a roiling boil. Blanche the garlic cloves for 10-20 second and remove from the water.
Butter the sides of a tall sided, heavy pan (like one used in a pressure cooker)
Add all ingredients, including the blanched garlic to the pan. Cook on medium heat until the sugar melts.
Turn up the heat and bring to a boil. It will foam up. I stir the mixture, but it is not critical you keep stirring all the time. When the garlic flavor has sufficiently infused the mixture, fish out the garlic cloves. It may start to brown a bit, it has started to brown, keep the mixture moving so it does not burn. Keep heating and stirring until it reaches soft ball stage, about 238 F.
Remove from heat. Allow to cool a bit and then beat until it loses its gloss. Turn onto buttered surface. Press flat and cut into pieces immediately.
How fast it sets up is dependent partly on how hot it gets before you remove from the heat. Too hot, and it will set up before you can turn it out. Not hot enough and it won’t set up.
Yes, better than the original. It has a buttery flavor the original lacked. Blanching the garlic mellows the flavor in a good way ,but the garlic still comes through clearly.
Garlic and chocolate, two great tastes that taste …_________* together?
*I’m sorry, I just can’t think of an appropriate word here. It could be great but I’m not brave enough to find out.
There isn’t any chocolate in this recipe, but it’s still weird-sounding. That said, I’ve had roasted garlic ice cream that was AMAZING, so it’s entirely possible that this would be like that.
It is sweet, with no more salt than any other fudge, so I would not call it savory, but the smell when I open the container certainly is good, buttery and garlicky. I find about half the people who try it like it and over half half of those take more than one piece. I cut it into smaller pieces than I do the other flavors so people won’t view trying it as too much of a commitment.
Would you call ginger fudge savory? Ginger is used in many savory dishes. I make that as well. My grandmother liked it quite a bit.
I made two batches of garlic fudge on Saturday. The second one I did not cook as long as the first; I was much quicker removing it from the burner when it hit 238. As a consequence it is moister, not gooey or sticky, but a perfect creamy fudge texture where the first batch is firmer and drier but still quite nice.