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Line a small baking tray with silicon paper. Put the milk, sugar and butter in a large, heavy pan and heat gently till the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Stir all the time
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Bring the mixture to a fast boil and continue to stir.
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Once the mix has reached soft ball stage , remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. If you want an easy way to check, invest in a sugar thermometer, soft ball stage is 115C, but, you can also test by taking a tiny drop onto a saucer and checking if you can form it into a ball. My earlier recipe for plain vanilla fudge has some photos of each stage that may help if this is your first attempt at fudge!
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Remove the seeds from the vanilla pod by splitting and scraping down the middle (keep the used pod to go into sugar and make vanilla sugar!)
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Start to beat the sugar mixture and after a minute or two add the chocolate and the vanilla. It's important to allow the mixture to cool just a little before you add these ingredients to retain the maximum flavour
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You should find that as the chocolate melts into the sugar, it starts to crystallise. Pour it quickly into a prepared baking tin (I use my brownie pan).
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Allow the mix to cool for a few minutes, before marking out squares with a round bladed knife
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Once fully cooled, break into squares and store in an airtight tin till ready to eat! This fudge has little black specks in it from the vanilla but the flavour is a lot stronger and purer than using essence.