Festive Fudge

Every year I have the same dilemma of what to buy my grandparents for Christmas and every year I end up buying the same boring selection box of biscuits from Marks & Spencer's. This year I thought I would be a bit more inventive and decided to make them something instead (plus grandparents love that home made stuff anyway because in their eyes you'll always be 5 years old). I decided to try and push my culinary skills by making fudge, however vanilla fudge is a bit of a cliche gift for the oldies, so I thought I'd spice it up a bit and give it a festive twist and came up with white chocolate and cherry fudge. So here's my recipe if you want to give it ago, I warn you though...making fudge is a labor of love, throughout the process you will question yourself many times asking why you ever thought this was a good idea? Why am I wasting hours of my life making fudge when I could of gone to M&S? But I promise the sweet reward of fudgey goodness at the end is worth it!

Start by slowly heating 500g of golden caster sugar with 500ml of double cream and 3 tablespoons of liquid glucose in a large pan, stir the mixture every now and again until the sugar has melted, this should take about 5-8 minutes. Once the mixture is smooth add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and turn up the heat so that its bubbling quite rapidly. Let this mixture bubble for about 30-40 minutes, you'll know it's ready when it starts to thicken and become more of a syrupy consistency. To check the mixture is ready, test a drop of the fudge into a glass of cold water and it should hold the shape of a sphere. Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in 100g of roughly chopped white chocolate and 150g of dried cherries and pour into a deep baking tray lined with baking paper, then leave to cool in the fridge over night. A good tip for when you want to cut the fudge into neat squares is to pop it in the freezer for an hour before you slice it, this makes sure the fudge is firm and makes neater squares. And then it's done and ready to either give as a gift or eat yourself! If your mixture does flop and doesn't set, chuck it in an ice cream maker with a normal vanilla ice cream mix and it will make an amazing fudge ice cream!