Nougat Nightmare

There are some things that can't or shouldn't be made at home, some things where "homemade" isn't a selling point. And I found one of these last Sunday. As you know I had success with my marshmallows and was really looking forward to my next sweet-making treat, Nougat was the next project. The picture in the book looks yum and who doesn't love Nougat? Right? Well, after a half an hour hacking away at a slab of white nutty stickiness I was changing my mind. To begin at the beginning, I started making it on Saturday. You make a sugar syrup (with a lot of sugar, really a lot of sugar) once it's up to a certain temperature add half of it into egg whites (already stiffened in my lovely stand mixer) the other half goes back on the heat and is brought up to an even higher temperature. All the time the mixer is going mixing the sugar syrup and the egg whites, then add the rest of the syrup and keep mixing. Then the first problem occurred, the mixture was SO sticky the mixer stopped after five minutes (it needed to mix for ten minutes) but I wasn't going to give up so I folded in the nuts and cherries, although fold in doesn't really cover it,think stirring cement and you are about there. Then I transferred it to the waiting tin (lined with rice paper, well potato paper but that's another story!). I left it for the requisite overnight period and Sunday morning, in preparation for lunch with friends for which the Nougat was to be a present, I started the hacking. A half an hour and a bruised hand later I had enough Nougat to bring along to lunch but the prospect of cutting up the rest made me blanch. As my mother would say, it was as hard as the hob of hell (don't ask, one of Maud's many words of "wisdom", but in this case it fits perfectly). I have to say I gave up, maybe that was defeatist of me but I want to keep the use of my hands, they do come in useful! I think from now on Nougat will be bought from the lovely Hope and Greenwood shop and I will leave them to the hacking. The picture above shows my Nougat compared to the picture of what it should look like, slight difference. I have to say, though, it tasted really good and there was no major dental damage.