White Chocolate Maple Walnut Fudge

I have been making this fudge from a recipe on the food blog ” Thibeault’s Table” for years.  This recipe is the real deal, no evaporated milk, condensed milk or marshmallows to get you fudge to gel.  However, I find the instructions a bit confusing and the timings do not work for me.  I have tried to nail the recipe down so making real fudge is not intimidating, although it is time consuming.

Ingredients:

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 cup heavy cream

1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter cut into pieces

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 tsp table salt

6-8 oz white chocolate (I used 1.5 cups of ghirardelli white chocolate chips)

Or substitute 2 4 oz bars of bitter sweet or semi-sweet chocolate broken into pieces.

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup toasted walnuts crudely chopped (might want to up this to 1.5 cups)

 

Method

1.  Mix together the sugars, maple syrup, butter, cream and salt in a sauce pan fitted with a candy thermometer.
2. On a medium flame and with frequent stirring, bring to a boil.  Lower the flame to medium low and allow the mix to come to 234-238˚F (16 min, for me; 7 min in the original recipe). This is called the soft ball stage, in candy-speak.  This means, if you don’t have a thermometer, put a cold cup of water next to your stove and at 7 min,  drop a few drops of the candy mix into the water.  When ready, it should form a soft ball.  See image below.   At this point,  the candy mix will feel like you are stirring crystallizing sugar and air.

3.   Cool for 10-15 min.  At this point, my candy mix was at 180˚F.  I added the white chocolate chips and vanilla to the candy surface without stirring.

4.  Cool further until the mix is 110˚F.  This took about 54 min, but the original recipe says to wait to 10-15 min.

5.  While mix is cooling, prepare a pan for the fudge.  I used a 8″x6″x2″ glass pan lined with foil, but you can use anything that you have.

6.  Once the mix is at 110˚F,  use a hand-held mixer to  beat the mixture for 1-2 min. till the fudge loses its sheen.

7.  Add the walnuts and mix with a wooden spoon.

8.  Spread the fudge in the prepared pan and let it cool a bit before putting it into the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

9.  Then cut into small pieces.  I usually keep this in the fridge, but it should be fine at room temp for several days and also freezes beautifully.

Note: If you don’t have a candy thermometer, just follow the provided times (which is what I used to do).  If you don’t call the soft ball stage right, and stop too early, the fudge will begin the melt at room temp.  But it will be fine to serve it straight out of the fridge where it will stay solid. The taste will be the same.

Don’t go much over the prescribed temperature or you will have hard candy.

 

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