Grandma's Old Fashioned Fudge {Classic Stovetop recipe} (2024)

FAQs

How do you make fudge creamy and not grainy? ›

Grainy Fudge

To avoid this issue, swirl the pan instead of stirring it with a spoon. You can use a wet pastry brush to wipe down any sugar that sticks to the sides of the pot.

After letting the fudge cool, it's time to beat it. It is important to stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture starts to thicken and its surface starts to look dull or matte. Now is the time to stop beating and pour the fudge into a mould.

Always use a thick pan

Your pot should be able to hold about four times the amount of fudge you plan to make; this will ensure you have enough room for stirring. Most regular fudge recipes can use a two to three-quart pan, while larger recipes should aim for a five-quart capacity.

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.

Once a seed crystal forms, it grows bigger and bigger as the fudge cools. A lot of big crystals in fudge makes it grainy. By letting the fudge cool without stirring, you avoid creating seed crystals.

Know When and When NOT to Stir

Stir the ingredients to dissolve the sugar until the mixture comes to a boil. If your recipe uses milk, stirring will keep the mixture from curdling. But once it reaches about 236–238 degrees F/113–114 degrees C (the "soft-ball" stage), do not stir it or even shake the pan.

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.

Secondly, the pot's material should allow for good heat distribution hence your top choice should be copper cookware or a pot with a copper core. Copper's exceptional heat conductivity offers unparalleled temperature control, an asset when working with finicky ingredients like sugar.

Fixing Your Oily Fudge

You also need to make sure that you're stirring this second attempt enough, as a lack of mixing may have played a part in the first fudge's oily nature. However, oily fudge can also be caused by overmixing. You should only stir your mixture until it comes to a boil.

Process. You start by preparing your pan. I always use parchment paper, but you can also line with foil or even grease really well with butter. Just make sure there's a barrier so the fudge easily comes out of the pan once cooled.

Will 2 8x8 pans equal a 9x13? ›

For a rectangle, simply take the measurements of the long side and the short side of a rectangular one and multiply them, i.e. 9x13=117 square inches. From this you can see that you can substitute two 8” pans for the 9”x13” one as 2x64 = 128 square inches which is close enough.

You have to control two temperatures to make successful fudge: the cooking temperature AND the temperature at which the mixture cools before stirring to make it crystallize. Confectionery experiments have shown that the ideal cooking temperature for fudge is around 114 to 115 °C (237 to 239 °F).

The key to creamy, luscious fudge is controlling crystal formation. If the sucrose (table sugar) crystals are small, the fudge will feel creamy and smooth on your tongue. But if the crystals are large, the fudge develops a crumbly, dry, or even coarse texture.

Cream of tartar is used in caramel sauces and fudge to help prevent the sugar from crystallizing while cooking. It also prevents cooling sugars from forming brittle crystals, this is why it's the secret ingredient in snickerdoodles!

Freezing your fudge is the key to a hardened result.