For no greater reason than the fact I'm re-acquainting myself with JOOMLA! and need something to write about................ 

On The Hairy Bikers this week, they made tablet, which got me thinking. So today I made some tablet of my own using a recipe I found on one of those internets.

The original recipe was from Stewart C. Russell  (no relation), which I followed and changed a wee bit.

I'm posting my version of his excellent doc here, with my own variations. All credit to Stewart and his Aunt Celie.

Components:

1 tin of Carnation Milk.

1Kg of cane sugar.

125g (half a pack) of unsalted butter.

1 teacupful of proper milk (not that half fat homogenised stuff fairies and girls put on their Sugar Puffs).

Vanilla essence,  whisky, mint, or whatever you want to add at the end for flavour.

Tools, Materials and Equipment:

A cooker.

Big, wide based pot.

Wooden spoon.

Bowl full of cold water.

A plate (for putting the manky spoon on and savig samples - more later).

Chopping block (or something else to keep the hot tray off your work surface).

Non stick tray to pour your tablet into.

Method:

Prep: 

Soften up your butter and use a little to grease your non-stick tray. 

Empty the packet of sugar and the cup of milk into your pot.

Stir them up together and dissolve the sugar into the milk as much as you think it can do.

Add your soft butter and stir it in too.

Add your Carnation Milk and keep mixing. Once it's as smooth and mixy as you think it can get, that's it.

Just for reference, I took a dod of the mix at this stage and put it on my plate (nice tip Stewart !)

OK. You are now ready to use the cooker thing.

Cooking:

Turn your heat on and bring the mix up to the boil, stirring constantly. If the mix starts to produce brown streaks, ease back on the heat. Anything darker than brown is bad news and you need to go and buy new sugar, milk, and pot cleaning material. This should take around 10 mins or so.

Once it comes to the boil, it's time to simmer.

Turn the heat down and keep stirring constantly. Ignore the phone, keep stirring.

Unless you are a 999 operator, then get the phone. Or an A&E medic or something.

Over the next 20 mins, the mix will get darker and more viscous. 20 mins is about right, you can adjust up or down with experience. But that's for the next batch.

Once you take it off the heat, you need to stir vigorously. What happens next is that the mix turns from the liquid state to semi solid, and you need to make sure the crystals are the right size before you stop stirring.

Basically, you stir for as long as you can before it goes hard in the pot. Which is not desireable.

At this point, you can add your flavour material - whisky, vanilla or whatever.

And keep stirring.

The Decant.

There comes a moment whilst vigorously stirring your cooling mix that you become aware that the viscosity / texture / consistency has changed. It's about time to decant to the tray.

Keep stirring and you'll find it quickly becomes stiffer. What you want to be doing is stirring until the mix is about ready to set, but not setting. You'll feel it. It's a Jedi thing.

When the moment comes, pour into your buttered non stick tray.

If you got the timing right, it will drop in nicely, you can spread the material in the tray a bit and it will look to start hardening almost right away.