Salted caramel fudge

This week we sadly lost a dear family member, and although I wasn't as deeply affected as some others in my family, I was rather sad and I did find myself in search of a bit of comfort food. And for some reason fudge came to mind.

I went in search of a recipe for Irish Cream fudge I had made a few times before and really liked. But while searching I happened upon this recipe for salted caramel fudge. I remembered hearing that salt and sweet work really well together, so I decided to give it a try.

However sea salt flakes cost $8 a pack, and since I have no other real use for sea salt flakes I decided instead to use a teaspoon of ground sea salt, which I stirred into the fudge rather than sprinkling on the top.

This was super yummy. With the condensed milk, the brown sugar, the glucose syrup, the golden syrup and the white chocolate you expect it to be really sickly sweet, but that kick of salt really does take the edge off the sweetness so you're left with a lovely caramel flavour. Though it's not something you can eat a whole lot of, it is very rich, and the saltyness did leave me reaching for a big glass of water. But it certainly is very good comfort food, so just what I needed this week.

Chocolate eclairs

I've always shyed away from trying choux pastry, because of vague memory of someone (no idea who) telling me it was really hard to get right.

Then a few weeks ago on My Kitchen Rules I saw two cops from Tasmania not only nail it, but do it en masse, at short notice, for hundreds of kids and parents. Not only that, they did well enough to earn kudos from a world class French chef. So I thought if they can pull that off, how hard can choux pastry really be?

As it turns out it's not hard at all, as long as you know exactly what you're doing.

The recipe I used came from a copy of French Cooking Made Easy that my mum bought me way back in 1997 when I first started studying French in school. It was my bible for many a French cooking project at school, and I still crack it out from time to time. The photography is a bit daggy, but the food I've made from this book always tastes great. I read the recipe over and over and over again, then read it once more to make sure I totally understood the process I was undertaking, then dove right in.

The pastry took me only ten minutes to make. The hardest part I found was stirring the flour into the boiled water and butter mixture, you have to stir really quickly to get a smooth consistency, and it goes into a stiff ball quite quickly, so stirring it took all my upper arm strength. Luckily after that the electric mixer does all the work as you add the eggs.

I'm proud to say I nailed my chocolate eclairs. The pastry turned out so nice and crispy, and using cream I'd whipped myself they tasted so much better than eclairs you buy in the shop. Ironcally the bit I got wrong was not the choux pastry I'd always believed was so hard to make, but the chocolate I put on the top. Chocolate being an ingredient I have much experience with. It seized, and became hard to spread.