White Holiday Fudge Recipe: White Chocolate Caramel Fudge Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between white chocolate and white fudge? ›

Chocolate uses elements of the cacao bean; even in creating white chocolate, cocoa butter from the cacao bean is the main ingredient. Fudge, however, is a confection made both with and without cocoa or other chocolate elements. You can substitute vanilla or peanut butter, for example, for the chocolate.

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).

Fudge can turn into caramel due to overcooking or undercooking, incorrect temperatures, or wrong ingredients.

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.

If your fudge turned out super sticky, or it didn't set as it cooled, it probably never got hot enough. This mistake is super easy to avoid if you use a candy thermometer and cook the fudge to the temperature specified in the recipe (usually between 234 and 239°F).

White chocolate is coagulated cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is the vegetable oil that comes from cocoa beans. White chocolate has no cocoa powder in it, which is why it tastes the way it does, and why it is white instead of brown like chocolate is.

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.

A lot of big crystals in fudge makes it grainy. By letting the fudge cool without stirring, you avoid creating seed crystals. Stirring would help sucrose molecules "find" one another and start forming crystals.

Fudge usually behaves this way when it's not cooked to a high enough temperature (due to oversight or a faulty candy thermometer). If your fudge is tough, hard, or grainy, then you may have made one of several mistakes: You may have overcooked it, beaten it too long, or neglected to cool it to the proper temperature.

What happens if you boil fudge too long? ›

If there is too much evaporation, when the cooking time is too long, there will not be enough water left in the fudge and it will be too hard. Conversely, if the cooking time is too brief and there is not enough evaporation, too much water will remain and the fudge will be too soft.

OPTION 1) Depending on how runny it is, you can either use it as a frosting for cakes, or a sauce for ice-cream. OPTION 2) Freeze it overnight. Cut it into squares. Cover each square thickly in melted chocolate, ensuring no part of the fudge is exposed.

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!

Caramel is made by heating sugar to the point where it melts, causing a breakdown of sucrose molecules into different flavor compounds. Think about the flavorless sweetness of white granulated sugar and the deep, dark complexity of caramel sauce.

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.

Common Questions About Making White Chocolate Fudge

All you have to do is combine a can of sweetened condensed milk, 3 cups white chocolate chips, and 2 tablespoons butter in a pan, cooking until everything has melted together.

Although fudge often contains chocolate, fudge is not the same as chocolate. Chocolate is a mix of cocoa solids, cocoa butter and sometimes sugar and other flavorings and is hard and brittle. Fudge is a mixture of sugar, dairy and flavorings that is cooked and cooled to form a smooth, semi-soft confection.

White Chocolate tastes rich with Cocoa Butter, giving these candies a smooth, delicate taste. On the other hand, White Confectionary is a sugar rush of sweetness, artificially or naturally flavored with vanilla, depending on the type.

But why is it called white crème instead of white chocolate? Technically, there's no cocoa butter in the white coating. It's made with vegetable oils like shea and sunflower along with milk, sugar, and vanilla extract instead. So it's not really white chocolate, but it pretty much tastes the same!