American cook book - corn syrup substitutions?

[RomComPhooey]

I'm going to make fudge and other sweets with my boys. Our cookbook must be American, as several of the recipes call for high fructose or just plain old corn syrup. We have a variety of different sugars in the baking cupboard. What is best to substitute with? And how much dry sugar for 8fl oz of corn syrup? Also how much vanilla essence in lieu of a vanilla bean pod?

[VegetablEsoup]

vanilla - I use about 2 teaspoons for a vanilla pod
corn syrup, no real experience, but usually if a recipe asks for a form of liquid sugar I use honey or golden syrup, depending on what I have in the cupboard.

[LizKeen]

Liquid glucose. Can be bought in chemists, but I know I have seen it in the ASDA home baking aisle. Golden syrup would work too probably.

[RomComPhooey]

Thanks both. I will use golden syrup, I think, but it will require another trip out to the shops .

Also, was planning to do the fudge with my 10 year old but Nigella (comparing recipes) says it is "dangerous" and children should be kept out of the kitchen during fudge making. I reckon that, as long as we have a safety chat about how hot sugar gets & we are sendible, it should be fine.

[RomComPhooey]

Sensible

[Parrish]

I've got a bottle. Bought it in Tesco. Kro corn syrup. I've yet to use it as I'm a bit scared of its unhealthy reputation!

[WhoTheFuckIsSimon]

If you want a good fudge recipe Google for the tesco one. You just need sugar, butter and evaporated milk and vanilla essence. Makes great fudge.

[RomComPhooey]

Thanks Simon.

[bakingaddict]

Two big tablespoons of golden syrup should suffice. The reason you put liquid glucose or sometimes you can even see it referred to as inverted sugar into fudge is that it helps to control the heating of the sugar in getting to soft-ball stage and it helps to reduce crystallization of the sugar molecules. Liquid glucose/corn syrup is not essential to making fudge it can just make it a bit easier to get desired results

[RomComPhooey]

Thanks for the scientific bit, bakingaddict. It helps to 'get' the rationale. The corn syrup is for a peanut butter fudge variant, so perhaps it is needed when there are complicating ingredients (smooth PB, milk chocolate etc) in the mix.

[RomComPhooey]

Also, in Simon's Tesco recipe it uses evaporated milk - can I just use single or double cream, which I already have in the fridge? I'm still in my PJs and resisting getting dressed to go out to the shops.

[WhoTheFuckIsSimon]

I don't know about the cream, sorry.

[RomComPhooey]

Shower it is then.

[RomComPhooey]

We fudged the vanilla fudge recipe & made a batch with double cream, caster sugar and butter + vanilla extract. I have a jam thermometer, so could see it hit soft ball about 3 min into the main rolling boil (which recipe estimated would be ~10 min). We took it off the heat after 5 min @ 114c (soft ball). From what we've scraped off the wooden spoon & pan it is rather grainy and a bit crunchy, like sugar in block form. Have we done something wrong? Should we have let the rolling boil go for the full 10 min, even though it was creeping up towards hard ball?

[RomComPhooey]

I'm asking because the chocolate fudge recipe has a lot of high cocoa solid dark chocolate in it & we don't want to balls that one up.