What did I do wrong fudge making!

bootman

I have just tried to make some fudge. I watched James Martin the other day do it and in looked easy.

I have put the milk, butter and sugar in a pan and was just melting them all together. Suddenly I had a pan full of curdled mess. The butter had just melted but it looked like the milk had completely curdled!

What was I doing wrong before I try again.

Many thanks

Joolzr68

Did the sugar all melt too like the butter? The butter will float on the surface of the milk for a while before the mixture starts to emulsify. I hope you kept the heat low whilst melting the mixture!

V.Lucky

Made fudge using a recipe off the Nestle website.

Haven't got a sugar thermometer, so used the ball test to see when it was at the right temperature. I added some vanilla essence to make it taste a bit nicer. I beat it hard for 15 mins but it didn't go to a grainy stage, but did go thicker.

I then put it in a roasting tin. First BIG mistake as it the tin is too big for the fudge mixture and it's really thin, not chunky fudge. Left it to cool and tried to cut it, but it's still soft. Put it in the fridge, cooled even more, tried to cut it again and it's too thin to cut into chunks and still rather soft.

Any ideas what I can do with it? I think it really needs to go in a smaller tin and be a inch or two deep (hindsight is a wonderful thing *sigh*).

It does tast nice though :rolleyes:

Thanks

twink

maybe melt it gently in micro and use over vanilla icecream, did you have to beat the mix once cooked? if so might have needed beating longer

rainbowrisin

Possibly it didn't reach a high enough temperature for the sugar to get to the "fudge" stage - too low and it's sauce, too high and it's toffee. You could melt it gently and try and re-boil, but I wouldn't recommend it. Other than sauce for icecream, small blobs would make great icing for cakes, excellent sauce for plain pop corn or beautiful "sticky toffee" on a sticky toffee pudding.
If you melt it slightly and mix gently with cereal (rice crispies, corn flakes, whatever (don't recommend weetabix(!)), add some raisins and / or glace cherries and put blobs on wax paper then it makes nice cake / biscuit type thingies (doesn't matter if they're all gooey - roll in some crushed cereal, or hundreds and thousands or something if they're too gooey to handle easily).
If calories are not an issue (or fillings!) then maybe have a fudge "fondue" party using a variety of suitable things to dunk in the warmed fudgy sauce - I recommend rich tea biscuits, bits of chocolate, sponge fingers...or anything else you fancy licking fudge from;)
HTH.

V.Lucky

Thanks for that. I did think of ussing it as a sauce. I did beat it for ages and ages, said around 10 mins but I did it for 15mins, my hand's aren't that good, so maybe I wasn't able to beat it hard enough.

Anyone know if I can melt it again and put it into a smaller tin?

jessicamb

Yes you can - I made some a few weeks back and the first time round it didnt set, so I reheated it in the pan until it got really thick and it was fine.

nursemolly

i had exactly the same thing happen last week and it was still runny after being in the fridge over night.
so i made some cake mixture, poured all the runny fudge into and baked it and had a gorgeous toffee/fudge cake.....yummy.

Aoife's_mum

Hello

I just made that same fudge today, and mine also didn't harden so I tried reheating it and doing it again (thanks Jessicam). I was thinking that maybe we were beating it too much? I didn't really heat it much the second time, just til it bubbled, then I let it cool a bit without stirring, and then I did beat it much less - as soon as it got thick I stopped and put it into the tray and it was hard by the time it cooled.

I also found this website on the "science of fudge" (!!) which helped a bit.

Haven't tasted it yet, mind! Will let you know if it's 'grainy' or 'smooth' tomorrow...

daisy2002

I've made fudge a few times, the recipes i used were useless & my fudge always turned out wrong.
I asked someone on another board for a recipe & i used that & it made lovely fudge.
The thing is, i know you're not probably supposed to do this but when i take my fudge off the heat i use my electic whisk to whisk my fudge.
When i've tried it by hand it just doesn't thicken up but when i use the electric whisk it thicken up nicely & the end result is a lovely smooth fudge that even my fussy son eats & loves

organic_wanabe

daisy2002 - any chance of sharing the recipe that you now use to make your fudge? Thanks for the idea about electric whisking, I must try that (though fingers crossed that I don't end up licking it off the ceiling).