Recipe Revision: Vanilla Fudge Recipe

Last year I published a recipe for soft vanilla fudge, which is no doubt delicious, but can at times be very temperamental. Recently I've been finding out ways of making fudge a little easier to make, and this is the resulting fudge!

Beautiful isn't it?

It turns out that the first thing I discovered is that condensed milk is actually really useful. My original recipe didn't use condensed milk, because it's quite expensive and at the time I couldn't justify the cost of using it when it's perfectly feasible to make fudge without it. But when I discovered a really simple 2 ingredient condensed milk cheat, it suddenly became a lot cheaper. So, I'm reconciled with it.

The second thing is that traditional fudge is too sugary for my liking and not rich enough. I remedied this by upping the butter amount in the recipe. Very simple, but now the flavour is a lot fuller and not as one-dimensional.

This fudge is really soft and melts in the mouth. Depending on how long you beat it for is how firm and grainy it gets: the less you beat it, the softer; the more you beat it, the firmer.

I'm going to be adapting all my previous fudge recipes using this new improved version. Stay tuned!

INGREDIMENTS

This is a large quantity that will make about 1 pound (450 grammes) of fudge, but I've found it can be easily halved or even quartered. Just be really careful when making small batches because it can burn or crystallise easily.

• 8 ounces (225 grammes) condesned milk
• 8 ounces (225 grammes) light brown sugar
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) butter
• 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) milk
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) vanilla or other essence

HOW-TO

• Prepare an 4 by 6 inch (10 by 15 centimeter) loaf tin by lining it with non-stick baking paper. You could also use a silicone baking tin, which needs no lining.
• In a heavy-based large saucepan, heat the all the ingredients in a heavy bottom saucepan the sugar has completely dissolved. Using a pastry brush dipped in hot water, wash the sugar crystals from the side of the pan. Alternatively, you can just pop the lid on the pan for a minute to allow the steam to wash it all away instead.
• Once the sugar has dissolved and there is no evidence of sugar crystals left, bring the mixture to the boil and once boiling clip a sugar thermometre to the side of the pan. Cook over medium-high heat until the whole thing reaches 118°C (245°F), stirring occasionally to prevent the dairy from burning to the pan.
• Once the fudge has reached temperature, take the pan from the heat and add the vanilla essence. B beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until thick, creamy and opaque. The mixture will slightly lose its shine and become more matte, and the consistency will be like freshly made Mr Whippy ice-cream. 
• Pour into your prepared tin and allow to cool at room temperature overnight.

Do not even think of setting it in the fridge: you can store it in the fridge once set, but setting the fudge in the fridge will cause crystallisation. Store in an air tight container to avoid it catching any unwanted odours or flavours.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR: The Grand Christmas Cake Creation of 2013 (Part 2)

Gingerbread Men (Gluten-, Dairy-, Yeast-, Egg Free)

From now on, I'm going to include a legend in my blog for what each recipe is free from and contains. I think it'll make communicating how dietarily friendly each recipe is for each person's individual needs. Here's what it looks like. This recipe is:

FREE FROM
☑ Soya
☑ Dairy
☑ Egg
☑ Gluten
☑ Yeast

CONTAINS
☒ Nuts (almonds)
☒ Refined sugar products (golden syrup)

Having a friend with a very strict diet has recently brought out my experimental streak for another airing. I missed being this fearless with my cookery!

INGREDIMENTS

For about 20 or so biscuits, depending on size

• 1 ounce (30 grammes) ground almonds
• 3 ounces (85 grammes) cornflour
• 5 ounces (140 grammes) rice flour
• ¼ teaspoon xanthan gum
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) vegetable margarine, at room temperature
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) brown sugar
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) golden syrup, or treacle
• 2 teaspoons of water
• Pinch of salt

For icing:

• 5 ounces (115 grammes) icing sugar, sifted
• Juice of half a lemon, roughly 1½ tablespoons (20 millilitres)

HOW TO

• Preheat your oven to 170°C (325°F, Gas Mk.3, or very moderate). Lightly oil your baking tray(s).
• Sieve the flours, xanthan gum, ground almonds, spices and salt together into a large bowl to mix together consistently; set aside.
• In another bowl, cream the margarine, sugar, and syrup or treacle until pale and fluffy with a wooden spoon, spatula or electric hand mixer. Add the water and beat again until smooth.
• Add in half of the dry ingredients and beat until fully mixed but still soft, then add in the remaining dry ingredients. You might need to use your hands to mix in the remaining dry ingredients.
• Sprinkle the work surface with flour and roll out the dough to your desired thickness. For me, about 1/4 inch (6 millimeters) works well for soft, cakey biscuits, and 1/8 inch (3 millimeters) makes nice crispy biscuits.
• Cut out the biscuits and put on the trays. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until set on the outside and ever so lightly browned around the edges.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
• Mix the icing sugar and lemon together to get a thick, pipeable icing and decorate as you wish.

And there they are! And they taste and feel pretty much exactly like normal gingerbread... who'd have thought it?

Gluten-, Egg- and Dairy-free Adventures (plus 2 Biscuit Recipes!)

The other day, I got a phone call from a friend who has been suffering a lot with a large variety of medical complaints for a few years now. Having endured countless tests, retests and arsing around from the HSE, she finally received some manner of positive step forward on the route to recovery: she had a food allergy test done, and tested positive for intolerances to dairy, egg, gluten, soya and a plethora of other things, including potatoes and tomatoes. Basically, the poor girl can eat nothing that traditionally appears in baking.

Despite the extent of her food allergies, she was happy to have some closure on at least a few of her difficulties, and asked me to help her out with shopping and cooking for her new diet. Meals on a free-from diet are pretty straight forward, but baking is a different story altogether.

Now, for years I've been developing wheat-free recipes to cater for my own intolerance, and occasionally dabbled in completely gluten-free baking with varied results, but now I was faced with a whole new challenge: baking with no gluten, dairy, or eggs. To further complicate matters, I couldn't use potato flour or anything containing soya lecithin.

Because her new diet is basically that of a coeliac vegan, I checked out a bunch of vegan recipes and found a few recipes, varying from promising to frighteningly awful. But after a few hours of researching I thought screw this, let's experiment!

I made up two different recipes (not writing them down, of course, which would have been clever) by just throwing stuff together until it looked right, and the results were pretty tasty! Such is the genius of xanthan gum.

LEMON SHORTBREAD

INGREDIMENTS

• 2 ounces (55 grammes) rice flour
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) cornflour
• ¼ teaspoon of xanthan gum
• Pinch of salt
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) vegetable margarine (check for soya lecithin)
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons of grated lemon zest.

HOW-TO

• Preheat your oven to 160°C (320°F, Gas Mk.2½, or very moderate).
• Sieve together the flours, salt and xanthan gum onto a piece of grease-proof paper. Set aside.
• In a mixing bowl, beat the living daylights out of the vegetable margarine until soft and creamy. Use a wooden spoon: it needs more elbow grease, but you have much more control over how soft you make your margarine.
• Pour in the icing sugar, and cream until light and fluffy. Then add the dry ingredients and mix until the flour is combined; you may need to use your hands as the dough gets very stiff.
• Lightly sprinkle the work surface with rice flour and roll out the dough to a ¼ inch (about 5 millimeters) thickness. Cut into little shapes and transfer carefully onto an un-greased baking tray.
• Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes, until dry but still pale. Cool on a wire rack.

GINGERNUTS

INGREDIMENTS

• 2 ounces (55 grammes) ground almonds
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) rice flour
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) cornflour
• 1½ teaspoons ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
• Pinch of ground cloves
• Pinch of salt
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) soft brown sugar
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) golden syrup
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) vegetable margarine
• Caster sugar, for rolling

HOW-TO

• Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4, or moderate), and brush ½ teaspoon of sunflower oil on a baking tray.
• Sieve the ground almonds, flours, spices and salt into a large mixing bowl and set aside.
• In a small saucepan, melt together the margarine, sugar and golden syrup. If you can't find golden syrup, use maple syrup or honey.
• Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the melted mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon.
• Take teaspoons of the mixture and roll into balls, then roll each ball in caster sugar. Place on the baking tray 2 inches (5 centimeters) apart and flatten out with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.
• Bake in the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until set and firm around the edges. Remove from the oven and cool on the trays until firm enough to transfer to a wire rack, about 5 or so minutes.

My friend and mother told me that these tasted very good, and there almost indistinguishable from normal biscuits. So, it seems throwing things from around the kitchen together with gay abandon worked pretty well! Now to tackle gluten-and-soya-free-vegan-friendly cake!

Why Bake Everything Myself?

Before I attend to the business of the day, I'd like to announce that my Facebook page is up and running, as well as my Twitter. Find them at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sweetie-Pie-Bakes-Stuff/149724028448663
http://www.twitter.com/sweetiepielmk/

I’ve had a few people ask me over the past few days why I bother making everything from scratch. As I mentioned in my post on homemade sprinkles, there are a few reasons. Of course, one gets the satisfaction of having made your sweets and baked goods from scratch, which is a good enough reason by itself before you consider any others, but also I a) get to control the exact ingredients in my products, which is important for someone living a life with any kind of restricted diet (wheat intolerance, lactose intolerance, veganism, organic living, et cetera), and b) it’s much, much, much, much cheaper.

Take this example. When I first began living a wheat-free lifestyle, I went to my local supermarket to get some shopping. At first I thought “this whole wheat-free thing isn’t too bad: I like rice and potatoes, and sure can’t I get maize pasta. No biggie-smalls!” I didn’t worry too much about buying wheat-free bread because I don’t really eat sandwiches or toast, and making soup from scratch to avoid wheat-based thickeners is no skin off my nose. I then thought “you can buy pretty good wheat-free biscuits now, I’m told”, so I went to the ridiculously titled ‘Health Food’ aisle, where things like dairy-free and gluten-free products are hidden. 

Having found the shelf where the biscuits were kept, my heart skipped a beat: not only was the selection as exciting as a magnolia wall, but a packet of Bourbon biscuits, my favourite biscuit, was €2.49. A few weeks previously, I could have bought a normal-person packet of Bourbon biscuits for less than a euro, and that would have enough biscuits in it to make me sick, but this wheat-free packet of biscuits had eight biscuits in it; just eight. Once I had engaged my maths brain, I worked out that this meant the wheat-free ones were over 30c per biscuit, and the normal wheaty ones were less than 5c per biscuit. I left the shop with no biscuits, and a bad taste in my mouth.

However, all was not lost. I discovered a few weeks later that I could eat spelt and not abreact, and once I had done my research, I began happily baking as I always had; and it meant a much cheaper lifestyle.

Let’s crunch a few numbers. Here is an example of a cost sheet; these are the prices as of today, obviously subject to change:

Bourbon Creams	Euro per packet	Grammes per packet	Grammes used in recipe	Cost of grammes used
for biscuits
Spelt flour	2.89	1000	115	0.33
Cornflour	1.19	500	30	0.07
Cocoa Powder	3.45	250	25	0.35
Butter	2.19	450	115	0.56
Icing sugar	1.09	500	55	0.12
Vanilla essence	3.99	60	5	0.33
for fillling
Butter	2.19	450	115	0.56
Cocoa Powder	3.45	250	25	0.35
Icing sugar	1.09	500	255	0.56
Milk	0.75	1000	15	0.01
Vanilla essence	3.99	60	5	0.33
			Total Cost	1.80
			Pieces	18 – 20
			Cost per item	0.10 – 0.09

Compare that to the aforementioned €2.49 packet of eight Bourbon creams. See? You could even make these cheaper again by using margarine instead of butter, omitting the vanilla essence, et cetera, without massively impacting the taste. It will a little, obviously, but not enough to make a huge difference.

Of course, what you save in money your trade for time. But if you get into baking as a hobby, it’ll become a fun way to pass time and save money at the same time. This allows you to make all kinds of different and interesting baked goods that you wouldn’t even be able to get in the shops; I haven’t yet come across a wheat-free gingerbread man, for example, but I can make as many gingerbread men as my wallet will allow at home.

Now, for ingredients: if you buy a packet of biscuits from the shop, there will more than likely be a long list of ingredients which are difficult to pronounce. Glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, humectants, surfactants, emulsifiers, a few vaguely titled ‘flavourings’, dehydrated reconstituted egg protein, and whey powder are all commonplace in mass-produced biscuits, and God knows what else; as you may have guessed, none of these is particularly good for you. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that biscuits and sweeties and lovely things aren’t supposed to be good for you, and are just fine enjoyed in moderation, but there is such a thing as damage control. It’s good to know exactly what has ended up in your biscuits and, if you make them from scratch, you can. You can ensure that nothing but a hundred percent natural everything has been used, you can even make sure that the ingredients are organic and fair trade, if you so please. Obviously, that will make them a little pricier.

So go ahead, become like me: an obsessive baker and saver of money. You know it makes sense.