Confectionism - Part II

I poked it and it oozed again. I was staring at two pounds of oozy sugar and there was no way I could eat it all. I enlisted the help of friends.

Upon arriving at work, I rushed my tablet packages into the fridge and sent out the notices that confectionary experiment #1 was ready to picked up.

The first brave soul arrived. I handed him the tinfoil package, expained that it should be kept in the fridge. We chatted for a bit. Then he mentioned that he had been given his grandmother's tablet recipe but he was missing the cooking instructions. I started talking about how you boiled it and the need for a candy thermometer (which had jumped from at some point if I remember to absolutely necessary and urgent on my mental shopping list) and he looked a little puzzled. I started to inquire into the nature of his recipe. When he hit flour in the list of ingredients, I suddenly understood. Shortbread! To which he looked puzzled, "What's this?" he asked gestering with the tin foil package that was beginning to lose its shape. Tablet. Not the same. Really not the same.

When I asked another friend what he thought of it, he was in raptures. So good, we're eating it with spoons. Sigh, not how tablet should be eaten. Yet another friend remarked she thought it was sweet, really sweet, very very sweet. That's the beauty of tablet - whatever it's consistency - you discover those with a real sweet tooth. However, I suspected that everyone thought I was making the whole concept of tablet up. Until we were at a Scottish restaurant where tablet was served to us. But even this was not what I was looking for. It wasn't creamy like I was used to. It was more granular. But it was a solid. I started asking questions. For the first time in my life, I talked to the cook.

That's when I discovered after about sugar, there was no similarity in my recipe and the recipe that they used, even the method was different. Actually, even the type of sugar was different. I was back to trying to decipher my grandfather's instructions.

Tablet - Take 2
This time I had a thermometer but I was still lacking the necessary patience to stir. I decided that stirring constantly was a sufficient but not necessary condition to produce the final result. In a way I was right. This time the result was a solid but it was granular. It wasn't creamy like the first batch. It was a different colour too. Sugar is rather cool. You put the same ingredients in a pan, cook it slightly differently and you get a completley different result. Even the taste was different. I was hooked.

When my friends have come off their permenant sugar high, their blood sugar levels have returned to normal and they can sit still, I'll make another batch. My perfectionist streak is kicking in and I want to get it right. However, my love of tinkering with recipes is also setting in. I'm not sure which will win. Most candy was a mistake. I think I'll be good at this.