Salted Caramel and Toffee Fudge

Posted On September 22, 2024

Normally, I’m not much of a candy person. I generally think the best use of candy is to bake it into something else. Unless that candy is fudge. My love affair with fudge started at a very young age. I remember my grandmother’s old fashioned cocoa fudge she would make for the holidays (and other special events), each bite would melt in your mouth and it has the most intense chocolate flavor. I remember that my mother would make a soft, creamy, marshmallow based fudge for her holiday goodie trays – lighter and sweeter than the old fashioned fudge, but also chocolatey and delicious. I also remember that my mother would buy an assortment of fudge flavors anywhere that we found it sold. Wherever we were, she would unwrap that fudge and use the little gratis plastic knife to dole out small portions for all of us to taste.

This fudge recipe is much more similar to the one my mother used to make. It leverages bittersweet chocolate to ensure an intense chocolate flavor, toasted sugar to provide caramel notes to the base fudge, marshmallows for additional sweetness and texture, sea salt to balance the sweetness and crushed toffee for more caramel notes and a nice textural contrast against the smooth, creamy fudge. This recipe is tied for my favorite fudge recipe, both to make and to eat, and is one of the most frequently requested fudge recipes I make.

Now, I know fudge can be intimidating to make. I know I personally was intimidated by the idea of making my own fudge for a long time. While I may have helped my mother with measurements or maybe beating the fudge when I was growing up, I never even thought to attempt to make fudge on my own until I was grown and out on my own. And I’m going to be honest, my first few attempts were…discouraging. I remember my grandmother using cold water to test what stage her fudge was at, so I figured I could do that too. I couldn’t. I still can’t. So, I shelved the idea of making fudge for a while…like, years.

The next time I decided to try to make fudge again, I armed myself with a candy thermometer and a lot of patience. That is the absolute best advice I can give you when it comes to making fudge: be patient with yourself, and use a (calibrated) candy thermometer for precise temperature measurements. Right up to the point where your fudge is brought to the right temperature, it is all about precision – properly measured ingredients, the right heat setting for your burner, and waiting for the right temperature reading on your thermometer.

Once you start beating the fudge, it becomes more about “feeling” – you start looking for visual cues (the mixture becomes less glossy, it starts holding ripples and ridges in the surface longer as you stir) and you start to feel the resistance of the thickening mixture on the spoon or beaters you are using. Until you get the feel for a properly beaten fudge mixture you may under (fudge sets very soft and may not hold its shape) or over (fudge sets hard, looses some of its creamy texture, may become a little crumbly) beat it. But I promise those “failures” will still taste wonderful and they will help you learn.