Friday 11 February 2011

Tablet and yes DS1 it is Scottish

My kids are so used to getting home-made tablet they assume everywhere else in the world gets it too . This lovely sugaroverdoseinasquare is a crunchy buttery creamy not quite toffee or fudge tasting delight . Willy Wonka never made it .
Everyone has there own recipe and method of making it , so I'll add mine to the pile
Warning - this is boiling sugar so take GREAT care ! Sugar burns are VERY NASTY !
The recipe is as follows - 4.5oz or 125g of butter , 2lbs or 1kg of unrefined granulated sugar , 300ml of full fat milk , 200g or half a tin of condensed milk ( dulce du leche is also suitable ) , a little vanilla essence for flavouring .
You will need a big heavy-based pan , a wooden spoon , small bowl with a spoonful of water , and a big whisk or hand held electric one .
Melt butter in the pan over a medium heat then add sugar and milk , keep at this heat and keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved - a good 5-10 minutes .
Bring the mixture to the boil then let it simmer (not fiercely or it will go too hard) for 8 minutes . It should look like this image below . Keep stirring .
After 8 minutes add the condensed milk , then bring back to simmering point for another 8 minutes , stirring again . Before taking off the boil , drop a little of the mixture into the bowl with water - WAIT (this is boiling sugar!) then use a spoon to see if it rolls into a ball - its almost toffee like .
Take the pan off the heat , add a little essence then using the whisk (or hand held electric one) beat the living daylights out the mixture until it starts to crystalise a little. Note- this can take anything between 5 and 10 minutes .
Quickly pour the mixture to a buttered rectangular tin , taking care when spooning out the remains of the mixture . Use oven gloves for handling the tin as the heat transfers very quickly .
Before it cools , mark the mixture with a knife so it can be cut out easily when hardened.
Once hardened , break into pieces and store in a container . I recommend only having one or two pieces at a time , as there is a lotta sugar in this! Enjoy!

4 comments:

Fashion for Aliens said...

I recently found a recipe for microwave tablet on Ravelry I think on the Scot Knits forum. It has worked really well for the few times I've tried it. Though your hand-stirred version has undoubtedly got a lot more skill to it.

Anonymous said...

Hello Mhairi! We met once or twice at the Tramway (I find it hard to make it along as I have a 5 year old and an 18 month old and I work! but always mean to try and get to the sunday one!) Anyway ... big fan of your blog and wondering if you could do me a favour. I'm running a knitting fundraiser called 100 Scarves throughout march including a couple of Stitch n' Bitches and cake! If you email me at jhaston@cosgrove.org.uk I can send you details. Maybe you can come along and give a tutorial to our beginner knitters?
Sorry for contacting as comment but couldn't see how else!
Jules (node-one.com/julesblogs)

Alli C said...

Hi Mhairi
Happy Birthday! I do hope you enjoy your day and have lots of knitty things as pressies!
Your tablet looks delicious so I'm going to try your recipe and share it with my new knitting group here. Fingers crossed as my previous attempts at tablet have not been too great!!!

Unknown said...

oh YUM, nothing like homemade Tablet, now I have to make some. Hope you had a great birthday and well done on the garter blanket