Fudging off

So this weekend I tried to make Ed's 15-step/recommendation buttermilk fudge recipe and it was a bust. Sticky and thick it was a filling-ripper. Other people have suggested I just mix up a "no fail" recipe that calls for processed ingredients, but I wanted to go another round with candy making, which has been described as the most complicated part of pastrymaking. And I can't even make a pie crust!

So I went back to the drawing board, Alton Brown style, and did the scientific research and asked Ed for some troubleshooting. We agreed I probably had too large a pot and too shallow a pool of candy for an accurate temp reading. But what the Internet said, which I did not know, was that you should not stir the sugar mixture to keep the sugar granules from sticking up together and forming long crystals. The reason fudge is so fudgey — chewy but easily detached from a larger chunk with teeth — is because the sugar does not all stick to each other.

The other thing I did was get a bowl of cold water for the "soft ball" test. I only had a vague idea what this was supposed to feel and look like — so I thought I would get some experience. Has Alton Brown done an episode where he goes through the stages of sugar? Signs point to maybe.

I started dropping hot syrup into water well before the thermometer had hit the "soft ball" stage and about three more syrup drops later, at the thermometer's "soft ball" stage, I got what I thought I was looking for — a ball that holds together but is still quite smushy. Dang if I didn't feel like I should be in a white coat with safety goggles. I wasn't dropping sugar. I was dropping science.

My question is who determined that there were "stages" of sugar, what exactly each stage was good for candy-making wise and how they learned that dropping in water was the trick to delineate said stages. It must be relatively recent because sugar was not an ingredient to experiment with until the past century or so. At least, that's the story I'm making up.

In order for fudge to get a good set, you have to beat ("aggressively stir," in Ed's words) the fudge. Because after turning into the perfect crystals the fudge needs those crystals stirred up or something. It makes the fudge set up, I guess. So I aggressively stirred the fudge and after a while put in some pecans and then, as I was thinking, is this going the way I need it to go? it got thick and matte and perfect.

Triumph in the kitchen. Next up, homemade puff pastry. Sike.