Easy Fudge

So, I love to make fudge for the holidays. Its easy, people enjoy it, and if I can give it away so there isn't too much in the house for me to eat!

Here is the recipe I follow (from Nestle Tollhouse) with my personal variations.

Fudge

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup (5 fl.-oz. can) Evaporated Milk
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups miniature marshmallows
1 1/2 cups (9 oz.) Baking Chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Line 8-inch-square baking pan with foil or wax paper

COMBINE sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt in medium, heavy-duty saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil, stirring constantly, for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

STIR in marshmallows, morsels, nuts and vanilla extract. Stir vigorously for 1 minute or until marshmallows are melted. Pour into prepared baking pan; refrigerate for 2 hours or until firm. Lift from pan; remove foil.

My Variations

I never take the pan off the heat before adding chips, marshmallows, etc, I simply turn the pan to low. If you take it off the heat, you may have to put it back on to melt what won’t melt. There are so many ways you can change this up to get the flavor you want. It is super easy to change it, which is why this is my FAVORITE recipe to follow.

Milk Chocolate (self-explanatory)

Use 1 ½ cups of milk chocolate chips

Milk Chocolate Pecan

Use 1 ½ cups of milk chocolate chips and ½ cup of pecans (or other preferred nut)

White Chocolate (again, self-explanatory)

Use 1 ½ cups of white chocolate chips

White Chocolate Peppermint

Use 1 ½ cups of white chocolate chips, and substitute 2 tsp of peppermint extract for the vanilla extract. Also, I crushed 3 candy canes and mixed half in and topped with the other half. For another variation, I have made this recipe with semi-sweet chips before if you prefer to the white chocolate and I noticed this year that Andes now sells their mints chopped up for baking, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Peanut butter Chocolate

This one is easier than the triple layer. I split everything down the middle. And combine separately then I layer it in the pan.

Layer 1 (chocolate)

3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup Evaporated Milk
1 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup marshmallows
¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
½ tsp vanilla
Prepare as instructed and place in bottom of pan.

Layer 2 (Peanut Butter)

3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup Evaporated Milk
1 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cups miniature marshmallows
3/4 cup Reeses peanut butter chips
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Prepare as before and layer on top of chocolate.

You can also make a straight up peanut butter fudge by using peanut butter chips, or if you don’t care if the chocolate and peanut butter is layered or mixed you can buy premixed peanut butter and chocolate chips (or mix them yourself).

Triple Chocolate

This one is slightly more difficult to describe. I split every ingredient in thirds, or you can make a half batch of each flavor which would be easier to split. I could only do this one because of my kitchen scale.

Layer 1 (Semi-sweet)

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1.67 fl.-oz. Evaporated Milk
2/3 tablespoons butter or margarine
Pinch of salt
2/3 cups miniature marshmallows
1/2 cups Semi-sweet chips
1/3 teaspoon vanilla extract

Layer 2 (White Chocolate)

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1.67 fl.-oz. Evaporated Milk
2/3 tablespoons butter or margarine
Pinch of salt
2/3 cups miniature marshmallows
1/2 cups white chocolate chips
1/3 teaspoon vanilla extract

Layer 3 (Milk Chocolate)

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1.67 fl.-oz. Evaporated Milk
2/3 tablespoons butter or margarine
Pinch of salt
2/3 cups miniature marshmallows
1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
1/3 teaspoon vanilla extract

Prepare each layer as instructed and layer each of them.

I think I would have preferred this one with dark chocolate chips. Just me though. I wasn’t using dark chocolate for anything else though so I didn’t have any.