Russian Fudge Recipe with Just 6 Ingredients

675g sugar
½ cup milk
½ tin sweetened condensed milk
125g butter
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 wooden spoon

Put sugar and milk into a saucepan and bring to the boil. The trick is to not keep modifying the heat. Try to keep it constant. If you have an electric stove make sure it is ½ of the way around the 'dial'. For example, if your stove goes up to say, 6 then a 3 or 4 should be sufficient. Normally a medium heat is fine.

Then add the condensed milk, butter, salt and golden syrup.

Boil for ½ hour (APPROXIMATELY) whilst stirring frequently with your wooden spoon.

When I made this recipe I found that depending on which stove I cooked it on, 15-20 minutes would normally suffice. Essentially you need to keep on boiling it until there are lots of (rapidly moving) bubbles and the mixture is almost 'syrup-like'. Ensure that you are constantly stirring the mixture. You do not want the mixture to start sticking to the bottom. When you are stirring, make sure you stir the spoon around the whole inside rim of the pot and also in a 'cross-shape' pattern so all bases of the pot are covered!

Now comes one of the most important steps to ensuring your fudge sets.

Once you are happy with the texture, take the pot off the heat and beat until the mixture turns thick. The texture you are looking for should be 'fudgy' but still soft enough for you to have 'control' over stirring it. Normally if you beat it vigorously for about 5-10 minutes (depending on your personal physical strength!) it should be ok. So basically, when the mixture starts to represent a sloppy, fudge-like texture (and looks like it is starting to set on the sides of the pot) and starts to appear almost wet and crumbly, then it is ready.

Pour the mixture into a greased tin. When I say 'pour', it is probably more accurate to say 'slide' the mixture into the greased tin. When the fudge has nearly set, mark the pieces to the size you require.

Optional: I also add a small drop of vanilla essence during cooking. Roughly chopped nuts can be added before beating the mixture if desired.

The lessons I learnt when I made this the first few times (although I make the perfect fudge now - I even sell it at the local markets!):

1.
Make sure your butter is fresh. Once I made it and I used butter that had gone 'off' slightly. I was disappointed because even though the texture was perfect it tasted slightly strange.
2.
While you are boiling the mixture make sure the colour looks right. Once I made it and I was afraid I would burn it and so I took it off too soon. Although the taste was nice, the colour was too light (it was a very light beige colour). The colour should be a mild tan or medium brown colour.
3.
Cut the fudge just before it totally sets.

As a child I always wondered why my fudge never set, it's all in the beating! Remember it's better to OVER BEAT than OVER COOK!!

This forms the start of many of my other recipes that I have perfected via trial and error. I got very sick of reading so-called recipes that would provide ingredients and methodology but no warnings, tips, tricks and little hints!!

It is my aim to write recipes that truly are recipes and provide 'real-life' tried and true tips, tricks and hints along the way.

I also plan to include all the healthy Indian and European/western dishes that I made up that helped me get from 86.5kg to 54kg after I had my daughter! Ironically I learnt to bake and make sweets after I lost all my weight. You can enjoy your food and lose weight!

Enjoy!!