Traditional Scottish Tablet
Gordon Muir, Head Chef for Sodexo at Perth College UHI, shares his delicious tablet recipe!
Ingredients:
900g caster sugar
250ml full-fat milk
110g butter
One 397g tin of condensed milk
A couple of drops of vanilla essence
Method:
Place the sugar and milk in a large pan over a gentle heat. Stir occasionally until all the sugar has dissolved.
Pre-grease a 13×9-inch tray with a generous amount of butter and set aside.
Once all the sugar has dissolved, add the butter and allow to melt.
When the butter has melted, add the condensed milk and mix well.
Increase the heat, and stir continuously while the mixture boils. Do this until the mixture starts to change colour - going a light sandy colour usually takes 10-15 mins.
Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to settle a little before beating. Beat with a wooden spoon in the pan until the mixture if almost setting. This may take a good bit of beating!
Transfer to your pre-greased tray, and spread evenly to the edges/corners.
Leave to set for at least a couple of hours, but ideally overnight.
If you want neatly cut squares/bars of tablet score your tablet in your desired size/shape about 30 minutes into setting.
And if it fails to set, here is what Gordon advises you to do...
“It is simply an issue of not boiling it LONG enough! The sugar needs to reach a certain temp, and it take a wee while to reach that. If you had a sugar thermometer you could measure it, but naebody has one of them just sitting in the drawer 😃 It needs to be on full heat, and stirred pretty much all the time, for at least 15 minutes. And only take it off the heat when it starts to change colour and goes a sandy brown colour. That should do it.”
