Oh I love soft tablet a bit of a mix between tablet and fudge. Jules prefers his tablet to be left to mature for a few months till it is hard and crunchy almost
Tablet is very hard to describe if you haven't had a Scottish upbringing; it's like toffee, but not chewy, it's like fudge, but more grainy. It's basically a wee bit of heaven in an otherwise dreich country
It is very, very sweet and if you have a savoury tooth it will probably put your teeth on edge but I love it - WARNING - NOT to be eaten as part of a calorie controlled diet
BEWARE: Making tablet requires you to boil up a sugar-based mixture. Sugar boils at a much higher temperature than water, and any splashes stick to the skin and cause very painful burning. Do not attempt to make this if you are not confident with a large pan full of very hot liquid. And it takes a lot of elbow grease so this is not suitable for anyone without a strong right arm (or opposite if left-handed :P )
Ingredients
• 1kg white cane vanilla granulated sugar
• 1 tin (approximately 400g) sweetened condensed (NOT evaporated) milk
• 100g UN-salted butter
• fresh milk to dampen the sugar
A variation we sometimes use instead of vanilla sugar is ginger sugar. Don't worry if you have never heard of this or seen it in the shops as I normally make it myself - bury either a dried vanilla pod or a piece of root ginger deep in a bag of sugar. After a week or two, fish the pod/root out. The sugar should now be ready and you should be able to smell the flavouring from outside the bag.
Equipment
• LARGE heavy bottomed stainless steel pan - IMPORTANT do NOT use a non-stick pan it will be destroyed
and the mixture almost doubles in size during cooking so go as big as you possibly can
• big wooden spoon (essential
)
• glass of very cold water (best to get two it's thirsty work cooking over a very hot stove
)
• teaspoon
• plate, as spoon rest and tester for mixture colour (I like to be tidy in the kitchen
)
• large shallow baking tray, carefully smeared with butter all over the inside
OK the fun bit...
Method
Dampen the sugar with cold milk in the pan. Add the butter and the condensed milk, and turn the heat on medium-high. It's an idea to put a little dollop of the uncooked mix on the spoon rest plate. I find comparing the colours of the mixture as it cooks a better way of judging readiness than using a sugar thermometer.
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Keep stirring evenly until the mixture comes to the boil; this usually takes about ten minutes. If you start getting brownish streaks (caramel), turn the heat down a little, and keep up the stirring effort. If you get black streaks, you've burnt it. Good luck with cleaning the pan…
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Once the mixture boils, turn the heat down low. Stir occasionally to stop it sticking. When it is simmering, the mixture can become more than twice its original volume, bear this in mind when choosing your pan.
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You'll notice the mixture darken slightly; keep stirring now and then. It will take about 20 minutes for the mixture to cook.
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Transfer a little of the hot mixture to a teaspoon, and plunge it into cold water. It should form a soft, sticky ball that should drip off the spoon very slowly. When it does this, it's ready. With practise you may find you prefer to leave your tablet for a little longer - it does impart a stronger flavour but for your first time I would recommend stopping cooking here.
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Now comes the difficult bit and all feminists out there sorry but this is where I get Jules to help. Take the pan off the heat, and start stirring vigorously. Try to mix in some of the crystallised mixture that has formed on the side of the pan; what we're trying to do is to get the mixture to form large enough crystals that it will set, but small enough crystals that it will still pour. Once you feel the spoon stirring slightly gritty on the base of the pan, and the mixture being slightly stiffer, it's ready to pour. The above is much harder to explain than to do; you should be able to feel the change. Of course, let it set too long or too fast, and you'll end up with a trayful of gritty lumps looking alarmingly similar to cat litter
You will also probably experience temporary sensation loss in one or both arms
and numbness/tingling for a few minutes/hours afterwards if doing it on your own...
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Quickly pour the mixture into the buttered baking tray, which should incidentally be on a heat-resistant surface as the mixture is still extremely hot so PLEASE be careful. Scrape out as much of the mixture as you can, as it will set in the pan to concrete hardness.
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You should now slowly see a colour change, from uncooked mixture (cream coloured, in the middle -- almost the same colour as the plate) to the final colour, which is a luxurious golden fawn brown. Don't be alarmed if you see little crazed patterns appearing on the surface as the tablet cools. It's just the sugar crystallising.
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Once the mixture has fully cooled and set (usually overnight, if you can keep your paws off it that long
), slice it into bars or small chunks, and give it to your friends. If they weren't your friends before you gave them tablet, they will be afterwards.
Macaroon Bars
Fresh they are moist and chewy, older they get harder and crunchier...
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