Ginger & honey fudge

Yes, I know. It's January. We all should be dieting, exercising or being otherwise virtuous to purge ourselves of our Christmas sins. But when the weather's this cold and wintry, all I want to do is curl up with some sickly-sweet carbs, and this soft and luscious fudge ticks my boxes.  If you're on a diet, cut them small and share them with your friends!

Ginger & honey fudge (from Life is Sweet, by Hope & Greenwood)

Ingredients

450g granulated sugar
150ml runny honey
75g unsalted butter
200ml condensed milk
200ml double cream
5 chunks of stem ginger, finely chopped, plus 2tbsp of the syrup

Method

1. Line a 20cm square baking tin with baking parchment.
2. Put the sugar, honey, butter, condensed milk and cream into a large saucepan.  Heat it gently, stirring every now and then with a wooden spoon, until all the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.
3. Turn up the heat and put your sugar thermometer into the mixture.  Stir every now and then to make sure the mixture doesn't burn.  Be careful once it gets to 100c!
4. Keep heating slowly until the mixture reaches 115c.  Take the pan off the heat and whisk the mixture using an electric whisk (I did mine in the KitchenAid) for 10 minutes.
5. Add the ginger and syrup.  Whisk for 10 more minutes until the fudge looks less glossy
6. Pour into the tin.  Cut into rough squares once set.  The fudge is quite sticky so I wrapped each square in a twist of greaseproof paper to stop them sticking together.