Amarula fudge: a taste of the Lowveld to make at home

Amarula fudge is about as close as you can get to a Lowveld game drive coffee stop without packing a bag. You need a tin of condensed milk, a splash of Amarula, treacle sugar and butter, and about an hour from pot to tray. The recipe below comes from Bringing the Bush Home, the cookbook from the kitchens at Sabi Sabi in the Sabi Sand, and we've written out the method in our own words with a few notes on where it can go wrong.

What you'll need

Makes one tray, roughly six servings (more if you cut small, which you should).

• 1 x 400 g tin condensed milk
• 150 ml Amarula cream liqueur
• 350 g treacle sugar
• 115 g butter
• A tray lined with baking paper

How do you make Amarula fudge?

1. Put everything into a heavy-bottomed pot over a low heat and let the butter melt and the sugar dissolve.
2. Keep it low and stir all the time. The mixture slowly thickens and turns the colour of light toffee. This is the stage where fudge burns, so don't wander off.
3. Bring it up to the boil and keep stirring until it reaches 118°C on a sugar thermometer. Take it off the heat straight away.
4. Tip it into the bowl of an electric mixer (or use a hand blender) and beat until the mix has cooled and lost its gloss.
5. Pour into the lined tray, leave it to set, then cut into squares.

Tips before you start

A heavy pot matters more than anything else here. Thin pans scorch the bottom before the rest has caught up, and burnt sugar can't be rescued.

118°C is what cooks call the soft-ball stage. No thermometer? Drop a little of the mix into a glass of cold water. If it forms a soft ball you can squash between your fingers, it's ready.

The beating is what gives fudge its grain. Stop too early and you get a chewy caramel. Go until it thickens and starts to look matte, then move quickly, because it sets fast once it turns.

Hot sugar burns badly. Keep children and dogs well clear of the stove for this one.

Where does Amarula come from?

Amarula is a South African cream liqueur made from the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea). The fruit is gathered by hand from wild trees around Phalaborwa in Limpopo, then fermented, distilled and aged in oak before being blended with cream, as South African Tourism explains.

The marula grows wild across the Lowveld and fruits in high summer, with the yellow fruit ripening roughly between January and March, according to Sabi Sabi's rangers. Elephants love it. They lean into the trunk or shake the tree with their heads to bring the fruit down, and baboons, vervet monkeys and plenty of antelope follow close behind.

You'll hear that elephants get drunk on fermented marula fruit. It's one of the bush's best-loved stories, and it doesn't really hold up: elephants tend to eat fresh fruit straight off the tree rather than the rotting fruit on the ground.

How Amarula turns up on safari

If you've done a morning drive in the Greater Kruger, there's a good chance your guide stopped somewhere scenic and poured a splash of Amarula into the coffee. It's a fixture of the bush coffee break, and for many guests it's the taste that comes home with them.

That's what this fudge does well. It travels in a tin, keeps well in an airtight container, and gets people talking about the trip. If you're planning to see marula country for yourself, tell us what you have in mind and we'll help you shape it.

Frequently asked questions

Vikki Jackson is co-founder of Marula Hill Travel. We plan boutique safaris across South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia, and Mozambique. We have stayed in most of the lodges we recommend, and we tell you when we have not.