I decided recently to stop being a perfectionist and become a confectionist. I know a lot of perfectionists but I do not number among my acquaintances, a self-proclaimed confectionist. It was a good job that I decided to give the one up to become the other. I'm not sure that they're compatible.
My first foray into the world of boiling sugar was trying to make Tablet - a type of Scottish fudge. My grandfather makes tablet around Christmas and every year, we get given our very own tablet. I was back in Ottawa when I realised that I had not had any tablet this year and furthermore, I had not even been given any. In sheer disbelief, I phoned my grandmother to register a complaint. Instead of her offering to fedex me my missing tablet, she handed me over to my grandfather, who duly gave me the recipe. I really wish she'd just offered to fedex it. It would have been much easier.
The Tablet recipe was brought over from Scotland by my great-grandmother. The recipe is jealously guarded as a family secret. I'm not really sure why. It's written in code and there's no way a mere mortal is going to be able to reproduce the product that my grandfather manages to churn out year after year. I know I can't, and I have the recipe and the method.
Making Tablet, take 1.
I followed very carefully the steps that my grandfather had laid out. It was easy enough. Stir until your arm falls off. So I did but I got bored or impatient or both. I didn't have a candy thermometer and it seemed to be at the soft ball stage. At least the way I did the cold water test, it was. Good confectionists can eye the boiling sugar and then take some of it and drop it in cold water. When the mixture hits the water, it will form a ball with a tail. The shape of the ball and the length of the tail as well as the consistency of both is supposed to indicate what stage the mixture has reached. As I realised in retrospect, this is really what consistency it will be when it's cool. So if it's soft and kinda oozes when you take your sample out the water, it will be soft and very oozy when you're finished with it.
I was thrilled as I poured the mixture into the prepared pan. It was the right colour, it tasted right, if a little hot, and it seemed as though I had done it right the first time. Oh yeah! Confectionary perfection here I come. Until several hours later, it still hadn't really set. Oh it looked set. It was even set when you cut it. It was when you tried to move it - say from the pan to your mouth. Then it would slowly sag over your fingers and then start racing for the floor. It wasn't a solid and it wasn't a liquid. It was something new. It definitely was not what I had expected. I had hoped for a nice package arriving in the mail. A care package. Doesn't anyone send those anymore? Apparently not, they give you morse code over the phone. Maybe it was a family rite of passage. If you can't pull this off, then you're not really part of the family. I'm trying to choose a new last name. I'm going to need it.
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