OK - you guys have got me inspired to try to make fudge - I have never done so. I have memories of my mom doing this when I was fairly young, and it was the labor-intensive sort involving a candy thermometer. Then she got that easy version involving marshmallow fluff which was just nasty. Blech. Never tasted right.
I did get her old recipe from her, and IIRC it was exactly the same as the one from Hershey - here.
Some questions though:
It just says “milk”. Would the fattiness matter (whole vs skim)?
It says “Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. DO NOT STIR”. Does this mean that I literally pull the pan off the stove, perhaps cool by setting in a pan of water as others have suggested, dump the butter/vanilla on top, and let the butter/vanilla float on top until the bottom layer has cooled a bit?
The straight dope of fudge online used to be T.P. Skaarup. Once reading his exegisis the fudge acolyte could parse any recipe for viability and render any recipe with assurance. The original pages are no longer available, but there is this, www.skaarupfudge.com which may render similar assistance.
I interpret it to mean:
Set the fudge pan on a cool burner.
Drop in the butter and vanilla.
Leave it set until the candy thermometer you left all this time in the fudge reads 110F.
Mix it all together until the gloss starts to disappear. Be quick and don’t mix longer than you need to.
Quickly spread into pan. Being slow and messing with fudge when it cools gets you chocolate sugar.
I use whole milk, my mother used 2%, my grandfather preferred Poor Man’s fudge which is made with water instead of milk. The main effect is that the less fat in the fudge, the quicker it dries out and goes stale. It also affects the texture a bit.
The reason I don’t just put the pan on a disused burner to cool is that on my gas stove, there is very little in contact with it, so there is nothing to draw the heat out and it takes a very long time to cool, and may get quite a bit hotter before it starts to cool from the heat in the pan going into the fudge rather than the air, which can’t take very much heat away quickly. If you have a disused burner on your electric stove that is cool enough you could touch it, that would be an excellent place to set it to help take the heat away quickly and do nicely to cool the fudge and not let it get much hotter before it cools. Poor Man’s Fudge
2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa
Dash salt
2/3 cup water
2 T butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine sugar, salt and cocoa, add water in a heavy pan with the bottom and sides buttered. Cook on medium heat, stirring gently until it reaches the soft ball stage.
Remove from heat . . . and you know the drill.
The key about not messing with the fudge as it cools is that if you start to stir and then stop before it is fudge, it is very likely to crystallize and become as Harmonious Discord calls it. chocolate sugar. I know from experience that the 110 temp is not magic, but just a temperature that is cool enough that you would not have to leave off stirring by hand because the pan is too hot. If you have mechanical means to stir and a heat proof mixing bowl, you can start with it quite a bit hotter.
Ok - so if I were to take the stuff of the stove, dump the butter / vanilla in, and pour it immediately into the Kitchenaid (not that I’d own such a thing), theoretically I could mix it right away?
I did at least find out why a wooden spoon is recommended: metal would conduct heat too well (thereby burning the cook’s hand) and plastic would a) melt, or b) break. So I’ve added a wooden spoon to my shopping list. The Skaarup page suggested buttering that first, also.
I have dumped into my kitchenaid when it was about 140 F or so. I would not try to beat it at anything over 110 by hand. I have used a plastic wooden spoon when beating by hand, as well as good quality wooden spoons. Some newer wooden spoons were not up to the task and broke.
The mixture in the saucepan foamed up to about 3x its original volume when it started boiling - guess the viscosity + the amount of steam being released made it do that. As it cooked, it definitely reduced. There was a fair bit of stuff clinging to the saucepan above the liquid - I removed some of that with a damp paper towel but I suppose some wound up in the final product that I poured out. I boiled it until the thermometer read 235 - right in the ballpark of the various recipes / webpages, and allowed for about a degree of error in the thermometer (which I’d tested earlier).
I set the pan in cool water in the sink to dump some heat - not absolutely sure that was necessary from what I read above but I figured it couldn’t do any harm.
I couldn’t tell what temp it was when I dumped it into the Kitchenaid. Pretty warm - the outside of the metal bowl was uncomfortable to the touch. I did scrape the bottom of the pan, and the sides as far as they’d been covered during boiling, with a rubber spatula (did not scrape the upper portions of the pan). I ran the mixer on low until it lost its gloss, though it still felt somewhat warm to the touch. That took a while - maybe 10 minutes. I poured it into the prepared pan and let it set overnight
The pan-licking bits were sort of caramelly when Moon Unit and I sampled them. The bits we tasted after scraping the Kitchenaid bowl were more grainy in texture.
The resulting fudge - cut just a few minutes ago - really brought back the memories, taste-wise. The texture was familiar also. A bit grainy rather than creamy, which I guess either meant both Mom and I messed up the same way, or the recipe is bound to wind up this way. The cubes were a bit soft - they weren’t obviously losing their shape (I’ll check later to see if they’re recognizable still!) but I could mush them in my fingers somewhat. Undercooked? Too humid? Just right?
If this stuff is still edible in 24 hours, I may actually try to make some up and send to my brother. But any suggestions as to what (if anything) I should try different next time would be gratefully accepted!
The Skaarup page someone linked to is very informative. I don’t know that I’ll try any of his recipes, as most of them seem to involve marshmallow fluff (what’s with that???). But one more round of the Hershey stuff, and I may try to branch out.
I went to epicurious.com to see if they had any interesting-looking fudge recipes. Typed “fudge” into the search box. Saw the first few results. Saw the bar to the left where you can refine your results by things like meal, type of dish, ingredient.
“Ingredient”. Hmmm - maybe they’ll have chocolate listed there and I can narrow it down.
Oh, I love Ski Queen cheese. It’s a type of hard goat cheese with an almost caramelly color and flavor. Nom. I could see it working very well with venison. But in fudge? I dunno.
it got picked up in the search for “fudge” because of the name of the cheese (Epicurious’s search results can be too broad at times). No actual fudge involved!
This recipe should go over well with the Dopers in general, and with the OP in particular (note that it’s not a true cooked fudge so it’s sort of cheating).
I start the mixture on low to medium heat and make sure all the sugar crystals dissolve before I allow it to boil, backing off the heat if need be. I also cook it to about 238 F instead of 235. The higher temp gives it a firmer texture; you may want to try 236 For 237 F first. Did you butter the sides of the pan on the inside all the way up?
I did butter the sides, though some stuff still stuck. Will have to remember to start it off slower before boiling.
The end results have been quite edible. “Grainy” is perhaps too harsh - it doesn’t quite feel like tootsie rolls on the tongue, but there’s a faint, very fine, grain on the tongue. The fudge remained soft but not melting, when stored at room temp. The second batch I nearly screwed up - forgot to put the butter / vanilla on top when I took it off the heat (oops!) but I tossed them in quickly before adding it to the mixer, and that seemed to sort things out.
It took quite a while for the stuff to lose its gloss that time - beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat… beat, beat, beat, beat… look away for a minute… WHOOPS! Quickly scraped it into the prepared dish, and let it sit overnight to solidify, and the results were just as tasty.
I mailed off a couple small containers to my brother in IL - we’ll see how well it survives shipping
(and I have to hand it to my oldest kid - when allowed to have just two small pieces for dessert, he made them last for 10 minutes. I’d have inhaled them in 1 minute, tops).
The fine grainyness sounds like fudge; it is not as smooth as a tootsie roll. When it crystalizes the bad way, grains can be 3 mm across or more and it is crunchy.
So, I found a few recipes online for Peanut Butter Fudge - even Alton Brown has one. Since my sister likes peanut butter - a LOT - I figured I’d give it a shot. As far as I can tell, it’s completely different to make from fudge - you’re basically just heating up the peanut butter and adding sugar. So, does anyone know if this will have the same consistency as fudge? I’d think not… anyone have a recipe that’s more, well, fudgy in texture?
(note that it’s not a true cooked fudge so it’s sort of cheating).