I love making fudge, but I’ve only made it using regular sweetened condensed milk. Fudge is actually really easy to make once you know what is needed for it. As far as candy making goes, this is about as easy as it gets. All you need are 3 ingredients, chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and butter.
For this recipe, I wanted to try my hand at making dairy-free condensed milk with my choice of sweetener. I looked at a handful of recipes online, and each recipe said you really could use any dairy alternative you’d like. Because I was doing this at the last minute, all we had on hand was almond milk. I had a feeling coconut milk would work better, but decided to just go for it with the almond milk.
I used our organic maple sugar for the sweetener in this recipe, and added a little of our organic vanilla extract. The almond milk reduced nicely, and thickened up, but didn’t seem to get as thick and syrupy as I had seen online with other recipes for non-dairy sweetened condensed milk. I even let it reduce much longer than most recipes call for, and ended up with 6 ounces of condensed milk. I have since tried this recipe with coconut milk as well, and it is thicker than the almond milk, but still isn’t as syrupy as conventional condensed milk.
The good news is that the condensed almond milk still worked great in a fudge recipe! I decided to add a little peanut butter, because I was concerned the texture wouldn’t be right since the condensed almond milk wasn’t as thick as I had hoped it would be. Most fudge recipes call for butter, and since I was going for a dairy-free option, I decided to use ghee. You could use coconut oil for a completely dairy-free version, but we love ghee and use it daily in our cooking, so that was my choice to add to this recipe.
Fudge is great plain, but it’s also nice when you add some crunchy texture to it. This can be accomplished with chopped nuts, or candy. For this recipe I decided to sprinkle chopped Unreal Chocolate Candies on top. These are like M&M’s. I also sprinkled the top with our Kosher Flake Salt.
The result was delicious creamy fudge, with a hint of peanut butter, crunch on the top, and a little flaky salt. It was amazing! I let it set in the fridge overnight, and it cut really easily after that. I also kept it in the fridge. I was concerned the texture would be too soft with the condensed milk alternative if I left it at room temperature, so I recommend keeping this fudge in the fridge until you serve it.
If you are looking for one more holiday indulgence, and fun cooking activity this year, give this fudge a try! It’s easy and so delicious!
