Cunningham Tablet

Will and I had an idea for Christmas.

We would make his favorite candy: Scottish Tablet, a vanilla-fudgey-grainly- sweet confection. His mother had given us a recipe a few years ago, but she had never tried so she was not sure about it.  We used it as inspiration, found some coberating recipes online, and then tried our hand at it.

First, this is not for the diabetics out there.  And if you aren't one when you begin making Tablet, you will be when you finish making it-- especially if you make as much as we did.  Each batch takes:

• one stick of butter
• one can of condensed milk
• 911 grams (or 5.5 cups) of caster sugar
• 1/2 cup of whole milk
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream
• teeny-tiny amount of vanilla, like 4 or 5 drops

I substituted the whole milk and heavy cream for just one cup of 2% milk, so I had a low-fat version.  Wink, wink.  I can tell you that 911 grams of sugar is A LOT of sugar.  And when I doubled the recipe, seeing 1822 grams of sugar was mind blowing.  

You mix the butter, milk, and sugar together, slowly bringing it to a boil and stirring constantly.  And I do mean bring to a boil s-l-o-w-l-y. It is best to cook the mixture on a medium-to-law heat.  Once the mixture has boiled, you then pour in the condensed milk.  The mixture needs to boil again and reach the temperature of 240ºF, or the soft ball stage of candy making.  You need to stir it occasionally, watch the mixture until it gets to the right temperature as well as nice deep golden color. 

After it reaches the right temperature and color, remove the pot from heat and the fun begins: a constant, quick, repetitive stirring for at least 10 minutes.  On the final batch, I finally broke out the hand mixer with the whisk attachment.  The key to Tablet is mixing in the air.  The air makes the sugar crystallize, the key difference between fudge and Tablet.  When you see the mixture gritting onto the sides of the pan, and you can feel the grit when you taste it (and you should be tasting this as you go along, it is really delicious), then you then pour it out into a greased pan. 

 

It will start to cool as you stir in the pot, and after the 10 minutes of whipping it followed by pouring into the pan, the tablet cools even quicker.  Let it rest in the pan for a bit and then you can score it to make it easier to take out of the pan.  

Once it is out and cool, the pieces will be grainy and crumbly and taste like vanilla and a sugar cube had a baby, which is almost the case.   

After 7 batches (4 of which were doubled and one of which failed when we didn't stir it enough; and don't even think about how many pounds of sugar that is), we are pretty much pros at making Tablet and yet I still failed to take a photo of the finished product.  Instead, you will have to imagine the small bricks of candy, sitting in Christmas tissue paper, in the decorative tins, sealed with ribbon and a homemade label featuring the Cunningham Tartan.