Saturday, 19 July 2008You get what you pay forFablet isn't cheap.There, I've said it. It's out in the open at last. Actually, it's no secret. Our famously fabulous Scottish butter tablet may cost a little more than some other brands out there, but there's a very good reason for that. It's because it's better. That's not just big-headedness or idle boasting. Our sweets are better because we don't take short-cuts. We don't use cut-price (and therefore low-quality) ingredients, and we don't leave it to machines to turn out vast quantities of confectionary. These things make a difference. Buy some low-price tablet and take a look at the ingredients. Glucose syrup? What's that doing in there? Vanillin? Why use a cheap flavouring when real vanilla tastes better? Salt? Doesn't good salted butter give enough of a kick to the flavour? The reason companies use these things, in just about every case, is cost. Using cheap, lower quality ingredients means they can churn out vast quanities of low-cost sweets. Cheap to produce, cheap to sell. Which is fine, if you just want a quick hit of something sweet. But Fablet was born because I wanted more. I love tablet, and have done ever since I watched my gran make huge bubbling batches of the stuff. I want every bite of tablet to taste like it was made with love and with the very best ingredients - not like it was thrown off a conveyor belt to stuff into the mouth of your average not-very-demanding five-year-old. Sweets are a luxury. They won't save the world or cure diseases. When done right, though, they're a hit of pure joy. Good sweets make the world better. Bad sweets make you wish you hadn't bothered. I discovered that, to my cost, this week. On holiday in the far, far north of Scotland, I stopped off at a newsagent for a paper and spied some little bags of tablet on the shelf. Partly to check out the competition and partly to satisfy my sweet tooth, I bought one. One bite told me all I needed to know. It was salty, with an unpleasantly slimy, fondant-ish texture and a lingering aftertaste of fake vanilla. It's the familiar 'almost-tablet' taste you get when a confectionery company has cut corners instead of following traditional recipes. A quick look at the ingredients told me all I needed to know - all the usual suspects were there, from glucose syrup to vanillin and extra salt. Maybe I'm spoiled, but I prefer my tablet to taste like tablet, not almost like tablet. That's why I use organic Scottish butter, to give it a rich, smooth taste. That's why I use Madagascan vanilla instead of cheaper, but much less tasty, alternatives like vanillin. That's why I make Fablet in small batches, to make sure every single bag is as good as it can be. Pay 99p for a bag of tablet and you'll more than likely get precisely what you pay for - something sweet, but without much flavour or texture. Buy Fablet and you're getting a whole lot more than that. It's about quality, not compromise. It's about the flavour - and making sure you get exactly what you pay for.
posted by Fablet at
09:40
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