BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Desserts My fudge won't harden!!

This is the fudge recipe I used. The milk never turned golden or ball-like it was just evaporating and started boiling over, I assume this is why my fudge won't harden.

is there anything I can do about it before it becomes an ice cream topping?

Thanks!


2 cups milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup peanut butter
1 (7 ounce) jar Marshmallow Cr�me
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Stir sugar into milk over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, leave on medium heat without stirring until mixture reaches soft ball stage (it will start to turn a pale gold color).

Remove from heat; immediately stir in peanut butter, Marshmallow Cr�me and vanilla extract, in that order. Stir rapidly because mixture will thicken quickly.

When it is completely mixed and thickened, pour out into a buttered 8-inch square pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then cut into squares.

It reads like a recipe that won't work.

Heat milk and sugar to "soft ball" stage? When have you ever heated two cups of milk until it could be formed into a ball?

What it appears to be is that the recipe is asking you to make your own sweetened condensed milk, then reduce that. Why not just buy some?

Additionally, you did not follow these instructions accurately, whether or not they would actually work.
The recipe does not call for boiling the milk (although how that can be avoided over "medium" heat, I don't know). If your milk boiled over, your heat was too high. One reduces at a simmer, not at a boil.

The recipe seems incorrect. If you look at recipes for fudge, you will find none that recommend using twice as much liquid as sugar.

I followed the directions exactly because I've never made fudge before. My heat was on simmer, just for a VERY long time trying to get it to the golden stage.

Like i said, I've never made fudge so I had no clue whether it was a good recipe or not, it was from a fudge website and seemed easy enough so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Nothing gained if you don't try, right?

It wasn't a crisis, it made a fantastic ice cream topping <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Meg

It does sound like maybe the recipe wasn't quite right. 2 cups of milk is a bit much. Something else to look out for when making fudge is the temperature. If your batch is undercooked it will not set properly. It should be cooked to 234 degrees which is the soft ball stage, so make sure that your thermometer is working properly. Check out the following article for some hints about making a sugar syrup and the use and care of your thermometer.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art46035.asp

I hope the next batch turns out great!

My mom makes the best fudge, but I don't have the peanut butter recipe here with me right now - I can get it tomorrow morning. But I do have her chocolate fudge recipe, which I think she makes in the same way, just uses chocolate chips instead of peanut butter, so maybe this will help a little. I think you had too much milk and not enough sugar. I'm not sure about the peanut butter - I will have to ask about that, but she uses 4 cups sugar and 1 can evaporated milk. She also uses butter.

Her recipes are from the 1950s or something (that's what she has written on it), but I do know it's how my grandmother, mother, and aunts always make it and it is the very best I have ever tasted!

I'll post more in the a.m.

Hope this helps.

Meg: My kids like to make the recipe on the back of the Carnation Evap. Milk cans. It's really hard to mess up.

Carnation's Famous Fudge

Here is my mom's full recipe for peanut butter fudge:

Ingredients:
4 cups sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1 stick of butter
1 cup peanut butter
1 large jar marshmallow creme
2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:
Cook sugar, milk, and butter together until soft ball stage.
Remove from heat; add peanut butter, marshmallow creme, and vanilla. Stir until all is completely melted. Pour into greased pan (grease with butter).

Now, this will make a whole 9 x 13 dish (we had a large family, so she's always made this size and it never went to waste :-) so if you don't want that much, obviously you can cut the recipe in half.