I’ve had half a large tub of brandy butter in the fridge since Christmas, and it seemed a pity to let it go to waste. So I had a think about what is in brandy butter – butter, brandy and sugar – and what I could convert it to. Adding more sugar to the mix, and then heating with some milk (I didn’t have any cream), I unexpectedly ended with something remarkably like fudge.
Yum.
Accidental fudge! Do you know how hard it is to make fudge intentionally, with special fudge thermometers and timers and the like? I think you just demonstrated why, it’s supposed to be a happy accident…
Not quite accidental. I knew roughly where I was going, and didn’t care much if it came out toffee or fudge. Although it is often said that you need a candy thermometer, my digital BBQ meat probe goes well above the required temperatures, and is a little bit more accurate than the average candy therm. Once I got in the ballpark, I started dropping syrup into cold water, and looking for soft balls.
The one thing I was completely guessing (and it could have made it go wrong) was the quantity of sugar to add, as I didn’t know how much sugar was in the shop-bought brandy butter. I worked on the principle of 50/50 sugar/butter, and back calculated that way, and it looks like I was right.
Yes, I suspect it’s the “didn’t care much if it came out toffee or fudge” which does it. Letting it do its own thing rather than trying to micro-manage it. The few times my mother and I managed to make fudge it was a similar “whatever it is it will be edible”.
I haven’t made any for a long long time, I’d have no idea about the sugar content. I do vaguely remember using condensed milk…
In general, my cooking works along the lines of “don’t care much as long as it comes out food” (food, as opposed to sustenance, I hasten to add).
Sometimes experimentation yields questionable results. But the spectacular and unexpected ones are more memorable.