Scottish delights - Tablet

With Burn's day this week, I decided it was the perfect time to get stuck into the Broon's Cookbook that I got from my parents for Christmas. And what better way to start than with some melt in the mouth tablet and a batch of sugar dusted shortbread?

However, this also highlighted some flaws in the cookbook's design concept. It's all very well being cute and quirky by pretending to be a collection of Maw Broon's notes and newspaper clippings, but not when it's at the expense of important details in the recipe! For the tablet, it missed out a major step, which almost proved fatal to my efforts, and it assumes in a lot of places that you already know roughly how to make these things (e.g instructions such as 'grain the mixture'?). The issue with the tablet was that it said to bring the mixture to the boil at 118 degrees. It didn't say that you had to keep it boiling for 15-20 minutes! My tablet looked pale and refused to set until I cross referenced it by looking up recipes on Google and realised that this needed to be done. After this it turned to a lovely warm, honey colour and became the deliciously soft, melt in the mouth vanilla fudge we know and love!

Helensburgh Toffee (Tablet)

• 500g granulated sugar
• 125ml milk (or water)
• 50g butter
• 1 dessert spoon of golden syrup
• 200ml condensed milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla flavouring

Melt the butter with the milk in a large saucepan. Stir gently and add the golden syrup. When dissolved, add the condensed milk. Stir all the time and when it begins to boil, reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and allow to settle and then add the vanilla flavouring.
Beat for around 5-10 minutes until it thickens, but not to the point where it is too difficult to stir (in the recipe it talks about graining, but I'm not sure what that means - perhaps so you can see the sugar crystals?). Pour into a greased tin, 15-20 cm in size.
Leave to set in the fridge for 3 hours and then cut into squares and eat them all up - but these are surely terrible for your teeth so it may be good to share!