Who else has been Christmas cooking? There’s been a lot of fudge in my life lately. For someone who had never made fudge before, the whizzy machine has made it a little too easy. I’m having to get it into cellophane bags as quickly as possible to minimise fudge ‘sampling’.

I’ve been using Thermoblitz recipe for festive fudge but have been experimenting with it as I found the instructions a little ambiguous, although the results were delicious. I’ve tried different types of sugar, different quantities and different flavours, and I also prefer to blitz the chocolate first.

I’ve re-written my version of the basic recipe below, more or less, for you to try your own fudge experiments.

The original recipe called for a cup of sugar (about 230gm), but then mentioned 80gm of rapadura sugar, which I don’t have. The first time I made it I used the full cup, then second time I reduced it to 100gm of sugar. The results were very different.

Fudge Comparison

The fudge on the left, let’s call it ‘Exhibit A’ had the full cup of golden/raw sugar. Exhibit B, on the right, only had 100gm in it. Fudge A had a richer colour (nb both fudges were a darker colour than this photo shows), was smoother when cut and was obviously sweeter. Delicious but I could only eat a couple of pieces. Fudge B was paler by comparison, had a rougher surface when cut, was equally smooth in the mouth and the flavour was far superior! So fudge B wasn’t quite as pretty but tasted better.

Basic White Chocolate Fudge

• 200g White Chocolate
• 1 can (~400grams) Condensed Milk
• 100 grams Sugar (I used raw/golden granulated)
• 125 grams Unsalted Butter
• 1 (20ml) Tb (or for UK 1 (15ml) Tb plus 1 tsp) liquid glucose
  

1. Break chocolate into squares (if using a block), and add to cooking bowl. Whizz 5 seconds, sp 10 to turn it into crumbs. Set aside (!) – leaving it in with the other ingredients whilst cooking will result in caramels, not fudge. Equally delicious!
2. Add condensed milk, butter, sugar and glucose. Cook 8 mins, 100⁰ C, speed 3.
3. Cook again 20 mins, varoma temp, Speed 3.
4. While fudge is cooking prepare your tin. I use a 20cm square brownie tin lined with baking/parchment paper. Do this now as you need to decant the fudge as soon as it is ready.
5. Add chopped chocolate to cooking bowl. Whizz at Speed 3-4 until all chocolate has melted through.
6. Pour immediately into the prepared tin and allow to set at room temperature.

Tip: With 230gm of sugar the fudge remained pouring consistency and took longer to set. With 100gm sugar it almost set immediately after adding the chocolate in the cooking bowl so be prepared to work quickly! I ended up placing a piece of baking paper on the surface and running my hand over it to get a smooth finish on the top.

Variations

“Festive Fudge”

Add a handful of pistachios and dried cranberries with the white chocolate at Step 5. Sprinkle a few more of each on to the surface of the fudge in the tin, pressing them in slightly.

Orange and Chocolate Fudge

For this version I quickly made some candied orange slices before I started.

I substituted the white chocolate for dark chocolate, substituted regular sugar for brown sugar, and substituted the resulting left over syrup from the oranges for the glucose syrup.

After pouring it into the tin I placed the orange pieces on the surface. It was tasty, although crumblier, but I highly recommend chopping the orange into much much smaller pieces as it was almost impossible to cut! I had to tip it upside down onto a board so that the orange was on the bottom while slicing. Also, using the dark chocolate it wanted to split so it might be more successful using milk chocolate or allowing the fudge mix to cool a little before stirring through the chocolate.