Easy Caramel Fudge Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between caramel and caramel fudge? ›

What is fudge? While caramel usually contains just one key ingredient, fudge is made from a perfectly balanced mixture of sugar, butter, and milk. Plus, it's not heated as high — around 115 degrees Celsius.

Essential Ingredients

For this fudge, you'll need brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk, regular whole milk, butter, salt, and vanilla. The salt balances the sweetness of the fudge, you'll need it! It's the holiday season after all! And a little goes a long way.

Luxury Scottish Sea Salt & Caramel Fudge Cartons 150g

Filled with our luxury hand made Sea Salt & Caramel Fudge. The addition of sea-salt enhances the sweet vanilla/caramel notes in each bite of fudge. Ingredients: sugar, glucose syrup, sweetened condensed skimmed milk, palm oil*, flavouring, sea salt (2%), salt.

For my filling, I simply swap the condensed milk for tinned carnation caramel (a.k.a. dulce de leche) instead. This tinned caramel is actually made from sweetened condensed milk so it's essentially the same thing but it's pre-caramelised for you!

Homemade Fudge Doesn't Always Set

If your fudge doesn't firm up after a few hours, you either have too high an amount of liquid to sugar, or your mixture hasn't reached the soft-ball stage. Using a candy thermometer can help home cooks avoid this problem.

Evaporated milk doesn't have sugar added. The sweetened condended milk is needed as no extra sugar is added to the fudge. If evaporated milk were used then the fudge would not be sweet enough and also would still be too soft unless the fudge is frozen.

Brush the sides of the pan with a wet brush at the beginning of cooking to dissolve sugar crystals stuck to the sides. Never stir the mixture during cooking or sugar could crystallize again. The mixture may seize and become grainy. Use a candy thermometer or conduct a cold water test to check if the fudge is done.

there is too much leftover water in the syrup and the resulting fudge is soft. To save the fudge, put it in a saucepan with 15 to 30 ml (1 or 2 tbsp.) of 35% cream and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar is completely melted.

Let hot caramel sauce cool.

If you've just finished making your initial batch of caramel sauce and find that it's too thin, let the caramel cool. As the sauce cools, it will thicken. If you're unsure if your freshly-cooked sauce is the right consistency, let it cool first.

It might be that you haven't dissolved all the sugar before boiling the fudge mixture. It could be that there just wasn't enough fluid or fat to enable the sugar to dissolve or it might even be that the fudge wasn't beaten long enough or hard enough. All of these factors could be the cause of grainy fudge.

What makes high quality fudge? ›

Candy that isn't cooked long enough will end up too soft; overcooking makes fudge crumbly or hard. High-quality fudge has many small crystals. If the process of crystallization begins too early, fewer crystals form and they become much larger.

Ingredients. Milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, skim milk, high fructose corn syrup, whey, water, chocolate liquor, hydrogenated coconut oil, peanut oil, alkalized cocoa, mono and diglycerides, buttermilk, butter, natural flavors, soy lecithin, pectin, salt, cellulose gum, xanthan gum, guar gum, annatto (color), vanilla.

Caramel, combining sugar with butter, cream, and sometimes vanilla, is cooked to a lower temperature for a soft, chewy texture. Toffee, typically made from sugar and butter, is cooked at a higher temperature, resulting in a hard, brittle texture and a deeper flavour.

When creating caramel, there are typically two different versions: wet caramel and dry caramel. Wet caramel refers to caramel that has been made by adding water to the sugar during the heating process.

Caramel can be produced in so many forms such as, sauce, a chewy candy, or a hard candy because of how much of an ingredient is added and the temperature it is being prepared at.

Carmel and caramel are not different spellings of the same word. Caramel is the correct spelling if you're talking about food or colors. Carmel is a misspelling when used in those contexts, but it is a word that can be used as a name for people or places.

Light caramel has a light golden brown hue, while dark caramel features a dark amber color with a slightly more bitter taste than light caramel. Various candies, confections, desserts, and beverages are made with caramel. Desserts such as flan and creme brûlée even contain a topping of caramel.