Another traditional French Canadian recipe I decided to try making this year is sucre à crème. Unlike tourtière, this stuff doesn’t tend to be made in huge batches. It’s delicious, though, so it doesn’t stick around long. So I thought it might be nice to have a batch of my own.

As recipe source, I went for the nontraditional Google, and found many recipes. Most, however, involved candy thermometers and manual stirring. Lots of manual stirring. Much complaining about a need for strong arms to successfully complete the recipe.

This was starting to seem less fun.

Near the top of the results, though, was one from Allrecipes.com Canada, that said simply:

1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup heavy cream

1. In a large microwave-safe bowl, stir together the white sugar, brown sugar and cream. Cook at full power for 10 minutes, stirring twice. Let stand for 5 minutes.
2. Use an electric mixer on low speed to beat the mixture for 4 minutes. Pour into a buttered 8 inch square glass baking dish. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm. Cut into squares when set.

I thought, that’s the one for me!

Based on comments, I adjusted the microwave time down slightly, to 9 minutes (which also made it easy to stir on the 3 minute marks). As for the mixing part, I couldn’t make it quite to the 4 minutes—not because my arm was sore—but because it just seemed to be getting too thick.

That’s where experience with this stuff would help, as I wasn’t totally sure what texture I was aiming for. The result was slightly more crumbly than I think was ideal.

Still, with those ingredients, it’s hard to go wrong, and it did taste delicious. I brought it in for work pot luck, and the worst part was being asked by anglophones what it was, as I can’t find an adequate English word for it. (It’s along the same lines as fudge, but it’s not fudge.) But despite the slight crumble and the weird French name, it proved very popular—in fact, there was none left.

Just like at Réveillon.