Slow Cooker Maple Pecan Fudge Recipe - What the Redhead said (2024)

FAQs

What is maple fudge made of? ›

Bring maple syrup, heavy cream, and brown sugar to a boil in a saucepan over medium heat. Continue to boil, without stirring, until mixture starts to bubble and registers 240 degrees F (166 degrees C) on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat. Add butter and salt but do not mix.

Take off the heat and beat in the vanilla and salt with a wooden spoon, then continue beating until the fudge has thickened and lost its shine. Pour into the tin and leave to set. Once it's firmed up a little, after about an hour, slice into squares and leave to cool completely. Best kept refrigerated.

Fudge is a dense, rich confection typically made with sugar, milk or cream, butter and chocolate or other flavorings. The base for fudge is boiled until it reaches the soft-ball stage (135 to 140 degrees F), then stirred or beaten as it cools to minimize the formation of sugar crystals.

Let the fudge rest at room temperature for 15 minutes before placing in the refrigerator, uncovered. Refrigerate until the fudge is firm, about 2-3 hours (or overnight), before slicing and serving.

Grainy Fudge

The sugars probably crystallized, a common mistake when making candy like fudge or caramel. If the melting sugar splashes onto the sides of the pan, it turns back into crystals and causes the fudge to seize up. To avoid this issue, swirl the pan instead of stirring it with a spoon.

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).

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.

Experience has shown that you should beat the mixture when its temperature ranges from 43°C to 45°C (110°F to 113°F), which normally occurs 15 minutes after the pan is removed from heat. The fudge is warm, but not burning hot.

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.

Why is fudge unhealthy? ›

But clocking in at around 130 calories and 5 grams of fat per ounce, this rich treat is far from a healthy choice. Although that may not sound like an unreasonable amount of calories or fat, it's important to remember that an ounce is a very small serving. Fudge also boasts very little in terms of health.

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.

If your fudge is soft or runny, it probably didn't come up to a high enough temperature while it was cooking. Put it back into the saucepan and add 1–2 US tbsp (15–30 ml) of 35% fat whipping cream. Stir the fudge as it heats, but only until the sugar in the chocolate is completely melted again.

Fudge is best stored at room temperature for 2 to 3 weeks wrapped up in its original wax paper. NEVER REFRIGERATE your fudge as this will draw out the moisture and leave you with dry, crumbly fudge.

Don't stir!

Once the fudge reaches soft-ball stage on the candy thermometer, remove from the heat and let the temperature drop to 110°F. Keep that spoon or spatula out of the pot until this happens. If you stir too early in the process, you'll make the sugar crystals too big and end up with grainy fudge.

A true staple in Québec, Maple Fudge (aka sucre à la crème) is a smooth, creamy and sinfully decadent maple treat that tastes like pure heaven. Another unavoidable classic in this household on Christmas Day would be Maple Fudge, or what we Québécois refer to as “Sucre à la Crème“.

We simmer select pure Vermont maple syrup, and as it cools we hand stir and pour it into maple leaf shaped candy molds. Our unique maple candy process is a bit of a trade secret, but we can say that we produce it the old-fashioned way, just like our grandparents did, without the use of candy machines.

Ingredients: Glucose (maize derived), sucrose, water, sorbitol (420), food acid (330), preservative (202), burnt sugar and natural flavour substances.

What distinguishes penuche is the use of brown sugar rather than white. In recent years, it has become common in New England to add maple syrup to the recipe for penuche fudge. Some confectioners will call this "maple syrup penuche fudge", and others do not make any distinction at all.