My father and I have always spent the month of December attempting to make fudge. It’s taken 20 years, but we have the technique down well enough that it turns out fairly well each time. When I was little, we started right after Thanksgiving and made several batches so that we had time to make one come out right.
You see, the secret to great fudge isn’t the taste — it’s the texture. And getting a good texture requires you follow a few rules.
We have always used the recipe on the side of the Hershey’s cocoa can, but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore. A quick search turned it up:
2/3 c cocoa
3 c sugar
1/8 t salt
1 1/2 c milk
1/4 c butter
1 t vanilla
You start by putting all of the dry ingredients in a big, heavy pan. I use my pasta pot, but something a little smaller would probably be better. The ideal pan has a very heavy bottom and straight sides so that you can easily clip a thermometer on it.
Next you stir in the milk. The recipe calls for milk, and my dad and I always used what we had on hand — skim. It turns out that was our first big mistake. Not only does a higher fat content make the fudge taste better, it also reacts with the cocoa to help with the texture. This time I went all the way and used heavy whipping cream, but I’ve had good results with whole milk and half & half.
Once you’ve added the milk, put the pot over medium heat.
And now you stir. And stir. Do not stop stirring. I had forgotten how much stirring there was to this, and how nice it is to have someone to trade off with. You must keep stirring until, as the recipe puts it, you have a “bright, bubbly boil”
This is not enough of a boil. Keep stirring.
There it is. You want the fudge to be boiling fast enough that there is no chance of the sugar burning. That means you are getting bubbles big enough to burst open, and that stirring it faster doesn’t bring down the boil.
Now clip on a candy thermometer and you can leave the fudge to boil.
Use this time to prepare the next ingredients. Cut up the butter into small pieces so you can scatter it around the pan, and have the vanilla ready. If it’s been awhile since you opened the bottle, you might want to crack it now, since it tends to get sticky and hard to open.
Butter a 8″x8″ pan. Really slather the butter in there, and be sure to get the corners.
Now, check your fudge. When the temp hits 234 F, pull it off the heat. Some thermometers might have a marker at this point that says “soft ball stage”. That’s what we’re shooting for.
Pour in your vanilla, and scatter the butter. The butter will sink, but as soon as it melts…
It rises to the top and makes a thin layer over the fudge to keep it from drying out as it cools. Neat, eh?
Now, you have to be very patient with your fudge. This is the second place we used to make mistakes. The fudge has to cool down to 110 F, and you want it to do it as slowly as possible, and you cannot touch the pan while it cools! This took nearly an hour in my house, so give it time. Don’t stick it in the fridge (or out in the snow) to cool it down faster.
This all made a lot of sense once I took organic chemistry in college. In the lab, we would crystallize substances, and the trick to getting a fine, pure solid was to let the liquid get as cold as possible before letting it crystallize. Once it was cool enough, a touch or stir would be all it needed to crystallize all at once. If you let it crystallize too early, the crystals formed slowly as the liquid cooled, and you ended up with larger clumps rather than a fine powder.
We’re not exactly looking for a powder here, but we do want a very fine grain. And so, let that pot cool down very slowly, and don’t jump the gun and start stirring at 120 F.
Once your fudge is cool enough, it’s time to jump into action. Pull out the thermometer, grab a clean, strong spoon, and start stirring. It’s hard to stir. It’s supposed to be. Give it all your strength, and keep stirring until it starts to be less glossy — the butter has all been worked in, and it’s starting to crystalize. I don’t have any pictures of this step because I was way too busy stirring to think of the camera.
Once it’s pulled together and loosing that gloss, spread it into the buttered pan. You will have to spread it — it shouldn’t pour easily at this point.
As you scrape the pan, don’t be too zealous. Here you can see two different types of fudge that I purposefully didn’t scrape up. The really shiny goo in the corners of the pan never got mixed, so it isn’t crystallizing yet. You don’t want that in with the good fudge, or it might not every completely set up. If you’ve ever seen fudge that “melts” or “sweats” a little, it wasn’t stirred enough.
The stuff on the bottom of the pan has already set up, and I don’t want that either, because it won’t really mix in with the fudge I’ve already pulled out, and you end up with fudge sqaures that fall apart.
This doesn’t, of course, stop me from scraping that stuff up and eating it right then and there. It’s hard not to when the kitchen smells this good!
The fudge in the pan should already be setting up. Wait until it doesn’t appear glossy at all, then cut it into squares.
