Despite me thinking that everything was crappy, I did find my place here again, and life picked up dramatically. Trust me when I say that if you had told me a year ago that I'd be where I am right now, I never would have believed you. Last February, I met my perfect Mr Right. I'm not going to go into detail, as my friends do tell me it makes them sick, but let's just say, all the clichés are proving to be utterly true for us, and we are knee-deep in planning our spring nuptials.
I haven't stopped my crafting though, and that leads me on to the reason for today's post. I've been making lots of recipes from Pinterest over the last few months, and adding them to my "Been there, pinned that" board, but I often make adjustments or have to adapt US measure to UK and I decided that I'd take some pics and measures and blog about today's attempt.
Salted caramel chocolate fudge.
Or ...yummmmmm
Whatever you feel like calling it. I decided to give my work colleagues fudge for Christmas this year and this beauty topped my list.
I used this post as my base recipe, but I omitted the mocha, as I hate coffee
I'm not going to lie, my finished product does not look like hers. I left it to cool for about 6 hours, but it was still very sticky and oozy, so I'd definitely recommend leaving it to chill overnight if you have the time...but I didn't.
Anyway, here goes nothing!
Firstly, I had to purchase my ingredients and as I planned on making four batches, I opted for the value range at my local grocery store.
I decided to try to be organised for a change and so I measured out 220g of dark, and 220g of milk chocolate into the bowl of my stand mixer, all broken up into wee pieces.
Next, I unwrapped 312g of value toffees into a glass, microwave proof bowl and poured 60ml, or 4 tbsp of double cream over them.
I placed them into my microwave, but didn't turn it on just yet.
My final act of prep was to measure out 240g of butter, and (shh, try not to think about this next quantity too much, or you will actually hear your arteries crying) 840g of granulated sugar, 237ml of skimmed milk and a tsp of vanilla extract into a heavy based pan.
With all this prepped, I was finally good to go.
I set the pan on a med/high heat and melted it all together. It took a good 5 minutes at least just to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar. Once melted, I brought it to a rolling boil, stirring frequently.
I let it boil like this for another 2 minutes before dropping my 25 marshmallows into the mix and stirring for another 30 seconds or so. This started the mallows melting, and so speeded up the next step.
Once they had started to melt, I turned off the burner and poured the mixture into the waiting stand mixer. 
I set it to a medium/low speed and turned to my toffees instead. I nuked them for about 2 minutes total, in 30 second bursts, stirring between each blast, until they were melted and the cream had been totally incorporated. Meanwhile, the mixer had been plodding away
It took quite a while to get it to a smooth, creamy, chocolatey consistency, but once I had I poured it into a lined roasting dish. After 4 batches, I came to the realisation that splitting the mix over 2 smaller pans worker better than one big one. Once, the Chocolate mix was in the pan, I poured the melted toffee mix on top
I used a big knife to cut the mix through the fudge
Finally I sprinkled the salt over it and shoved it in the fridge.
It does taste delicious! And it looks lovely in my little jars too. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome.
