Kitchenette

Ah, cooking.

Certain things are just impossible to screw up. Spaghetti, for instance. Taste it. Is it crunchy? Taste it again. Drain, pour sauce, done.

Then there’s buttermilk fudge.

It’s a short list of ingredients - buttermilk, sugar (lots), butter and walnuts. The basic idea behind fudge is to create a very, very sugary liquid and boil it down so that when it cools, you have yourself a nice bar of sugary goodness. Oh, but the details.

When you first start to heat the buttermilk and sugar solution, it turns a fairly transparent milky white color as more of the sugar dissolves into the buttermilk. One of the ways to protect yourself should you get burned (sticky, 215° F liquid hurts!) is to keep a bowl of ice water nearby, just in case. That said, it’s not something to be terribly worried about, as the sugar mixture isn’t exactly sloshing around the whole time.

Regarding the soft ball stage

This stage of sugar doesn’t refer to the sport, but instead to how pliable the candy is once it cools. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can test the candy by dunking a teaspoon of syrup (carefully) in cold water and then rolling it between your fingers to see what form it takes. If you can form it into a soft, pliable ball, voila! Soft ball stage. For lots of details, click here.

The longer you simmer a sugar and liquid mixture, the more water boils out of it. The liquid will look the same from 210° F to 240° F - like a thin syrup - but as it cools and crystallizes, it takes on different forms depending on how much water boiled out from the mixture. If you heated the mixture to 230° F, it becomes something akin to caramel. At 235° F is the soft ball, fudgy stage. At 240° F, you enter the hard ball stage, at which point any hopes of fudge are lost to something resembling a thick, hard brittle. And thus, I was afraid to heat the mixture too much beyond the lower limit of the recipe’s target temperature.

The recipe specified 234° F as soft-ball stage. I managed to get it to 233.8° F and called it done. Oops. At this temperature, you get not fudge, but something akin to “sludge”.

In the classic style of “do as I say, not as I do”, I now offer a few tips to avoid “sludge”.

DO stir constantly for 35 minutes. The goal is to keep the fudge-to-be at the same temperature throughout, so let’s just call it a biceps workout.

DON’T be afraid of overheating the fudge if you have a digital thermometer. Obviously, if you’re testing for soft ball stage via the “dunk in water” method outlined above, this doesn’t apply to you. By having a digital thermometer, this uncertainty can be eliminated - and then the risk is in undercooking your fudge if you get nervous and jump ship. Heat the fudge to 235 or 236 - then you can be sure you’re firmly in the soft ball stage.

DO know your candy thermometer, especially if it is of the non-digital variety. Bring a pot of water to a rapid boil and stick the bulb/sensor of the thermometer into it. Does it read 212 degrees (assuming you are at sea level)? If not, you’ll need to take the difference into account when making any type of candy.

Buttermilk Candy
Adapted from the America’s Best Lost Recipes cookbook

2 cups low-fat buttermilk
4 cups sugar
4 tablespoons butter, cut into 4 pieces
1 1/2 cups walnuts or pecans, chopped

1. Line an 8-inch square pan baking pan with foil, leaving some excess over the sides. (You’ll pull the fudge out with the excess later.) Grease the foil.
2. Combine the sugar and buttermilk in a medium or large heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. (Be careful - buttermilk boils over in a hurry!)
3. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches the soft-ball stage on a candy thermometer, 234-240 degrees. This will take 35-40 minutes. At this point, the mixture will be milky, yet translucent. And very, very hot.
4. Off the heat, add the butter, mixing with a wooden spoon until the candy begins to thicken, about 5 minutes. Stir in the nuts until the mixture becomes difficult to stir, 3 minutes. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and cool for at least 2 hours
5. Remove and cut into 1-inch squares. The candy will store for 2 weeks.