Making Perfect Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge: A Delicious Recipe to Try

As we near the end of our fudge-making journey, it's time to take a look at the final product and admire its beauty. The peanut butter squash pattern on top worked amazingly well, adding a unique touch to this delicious treat. To reveal the full extent of the design, we'll carefully remove the parchment paper from the sides of the fudge, taking care not to disturb the smooth surface.

Once the parchment is removed, we can cut into four large cubes to enjoy our creation. The clean cut is a testament to the fact that the fudge has set properly, and we should be proud of ourselves for achieving this perfect consistency. If you're feeling impatient or want to speed up the setting process, we can always refrigerate or freeze the fudge for a short while.

Taking a closer look at the side of the fudge, we can see that it's achieved a beautiful smooth edge, which is a hallmark of well-made fudge. This attention to detail is essential in creating a treat that's not only delicious but also visually appealing. When it comes to making fudge, it's all about finding the perfect balance between creamy and chunky – in this case, we've opted for a smooth, peanut-buttery texture.

One of the best things about homemade fudge is its potential for customization. While I personally prefer creamy over crunchy, some people might enjoy adding a few whole peanuts to their fudge for added texture. If you're feeling adventurous, give it a try and see how it turns out! Ultimately, the key to making great fudge is experimenting with different ingredients and finding what works best for your taste buds.

Tasting our finished product is like taking a bite of a brownie – it's rich, decadent, and utterly delicious. The combination of sugar, buttery peanut butter, and creamy chocolate is truly unbeatable. And the best part? It melts in your mouth, coating your tongue with its oily goodness. Be warned: this fudge is so good that it might just inspire you to get a cavity – but trust me when I say it's worth it.

If you're looking for a unique gift idea or want to treat yourself to something special, consider making some homemade fudge. It's the perfect solution for those who struggle with gift-giving, as everyone will love the chocolatey goodness that comes out of this process. And don't forget to share your creations on social media – I'd love to see what you're working on and join the notifications gang in the meantime!

As we wrap up our fudge-making journey, remember that experimenting with different ingredients is key to creating truly unique treats. Don't be afraid to try new things and adjust recipes to suit your taste preferences. And if you have any questions or want to share your own fudge-making experiences, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Lastly, make sure to check out my Instagram account for behind-the-scenes peeks at all my cooking adventures – I often post videos and photos that don't make it into these articles. Join the notifications gang by subscribing to this channel and get ready to indulge in some serious fudge-fueled fun!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso many great combinations in this world but perhaps the one that trumps them all is chocolate and peanut butter those two sound so good together now I know a lot of people are allergic to nuts but those of you that aren't know exactly what I'm talking about here anytime I think of peanut butter I think of the Everlasting debate creamy or crunchy you know it's funny over the years I've fluctuated back and forth between the creamy gang and the crunchy gang I think ultimately I always land on creamy and I'm not sure why something in the back of my mind always just reminds me of that Skippy creamy peanut butter and that light blue jar all those fake probably really bad for you synthetic ingredients but so so creamy and delicious I literally used to eat that stuff right out of the jar until I was choking on it but today we're going to take those two amazing things that complement each other so incredibly well and we're going to make some chocolate peanut butter fudge fudge is probably one of those things that you don't really have that many times a year you probably only get it once in a while when you go on some little trip and see some cute little fudge store maybe get a tiny little square to bring home to your family and friends at least that's always been my experience with fudge but why don't we make it at home it's so easy to make it's so rich it's so delicious it's so So Soft almost like biting into a brownie so I say it again why don't we make it more at home that's exactly what we're going to do today but we're going to use the chocolate from a cacao pot after all in this cacao series we always get our chocolate the freshest way possible overnight from Ecuador in a nice big fresh cacao pod like I said these cacao pods flew in overnight from Ecuador it's really funny they keep getting held up at customs and I'm not really sure why they may think I'm trying to smuggle things in through cacao pods but honestly I'm not I'm just trying to make good food now what I'm holding right here is what I like to call the hero caca CA pod every single time I get a shipment of caca pods I always pick out the one that I think is the most beautiful and there's always one let me show you right now I have about 6 to eight of these things right off the bat when I open it sometimes they're just ones that are too light green and almost just don't look quite ripe yet to me you can see on both of these right here that they're obviously beautiful but they don't quite have that beautiful red vibrancy that some of the other ones typically get then some of the other ones are nice and pretty too but again this one kind of has a mix of green and red and hasn't fully developed that beautiful reddish color that we get in this one right here and then of course since we're shipping them from so far away often times they come with a nice big crack right through them if I squeeze it just a little bit you'll see that it's already kind of open and I like to say that these are always okay to roast but I don't really like to eat the flesh off the ones that have big crack in them anyway I think you already know how we're going to open these cacao pods up so let's get some chopping going now of course we have to go full ninja on everybody right now today I'm doing something a little different and I've lined up four cacao pods right in front of me here my hands probably going to be bright right after this by now I've got an outer palm of Steel I'm going to start from right to left it's going to be a rapid fire series of chops so be prepared ah before I touch them let's check number one very solid clean crack I can very easily peel this one open I think that's good but you can be the judges of this number two kind of an odd fracture right across the middle and then a smaller hairline crack that goes across this way again I think I've cracked this one clean open this looks pretty set to me number three by far and away is the best and I actually have to hold it closed to make sure that the cacao seeds don't fall out I don't know exactly what happened to this one because it was perfect ly intact before I touched it but this one is shattered and last but not least the crack is small and almost towards the top of it so I didn't exactly get the middle of this one but very easy to peel this back and open it up so I think I've done a great job here now to start I'm going to break open my caca pods and put all the seeds into a bowl as always these are so so fresh and slimy the gooier and stickier they are the better the quality and by that I mean they're fresher the more juice these things retain when you get them shipped the quicker they were probably shipped out from their original destination and hopefully you can see that these babies are extremely juicy the flesh is practically dripping through my fingers here which means these are very fresh I'll just show you another example of them right out of the Pod here they're glistening with that juice around each seed and now when I pull it out listen I'll crack that last one open and push in those seeds for those of you that haven't seen the series before yes this is exactly where chocolate comes from there may not be a lot of this in your traditional Hershey's bar but in a true chocolate bar there's a lot of this cacao at this point I'd cover this up here and let these ferment for a week because I don't want to make you wait I've already done this and I've already placed some of the oven right behind me to roast them so I'll bring those out right now once these have come out of the oven they'll be golden brown and dark they'll have a really chocolatey nutty flavor to them the aroma permeates the entire room and it's incredible when I pick one of these seeds up it doesn't really look like much at first but when I crack it between my fingers that's when I get cacao nibs once I separate all that shell I'm left with these beautiful nibs that you've probably seen on top of smoothie bowls or maybe sprinkle the tops and baked goods but this is what's blended into chocolate so in order to make our fudge we're going to do exactly that to start with our spice grinder I'm going to pour in some of my caca nibs I'll follow it with just a little bit of sugar but keep in mind we're adding sugar to our fudge so we don't need this chocolate to be too sugary then almost like blending peanuts into peanut butter which we'll do momentarily I'm going to slowly pulse this until we get a chocolate paste once this is complete set it aside for later use in a small sauce pan I'll start with 3 cups or 600 g of sugar then I'll add 1 and 1/2 sticks also known as 3/4 cups or 170 G of butter then 2/3 top are 168 G of evaporated milk I'll slowly stir these to combine and then bring them to a boil with an instant read thermometer whisk this constantly and after about 5 minutes your mixture should get close to the desired temperature the second it hits 234° F on your instant read thermometer take it off the heat and when you do this immediately add in your chocolate chips whisk a little bit until that chocolate is well combined and fully melted it should really only take a few seconds for that to happen once this is mixed we're going to add about 7 oz of marshmallow fluff which should be about 1 jar when I was a kid I used to make peanut butter and fluff sandwiches all the time we called them fluffer Nutters and I always said that unless you were choking on your fluffer Nutter meaning there was so much peanut butter and fluff in that thing you weren't doing it right slowly stir in that fluff with that chocolate mixture it should really thicken up a lot at this point and you might need to sub in somebody else to help you stir what I will say though is that this workout right now is going to be worth it already you'll start smelling that amazing amazing flavor of fudge that you can't possibly mistake for anything else once you mixed that in also add just a little bit of vanilla extract this right here is my homemade vanilla extract and it's not quite yet as powerful as you might get at the store but you'll want to add in about one teaspoon when you do this step then whisk to combine this one last time and we'll set it aside for just a few moments for our peanut butter we'll sprinkle on about a cup of peanuts I'm just going to roast these a little bit more to get extra flavor out of them then of course we'll turn this into our own peanut butter by blending it I'll roast these for just a short bit at 350 F to make our peanut butter we'll slide all of our peanuts into this blender homemade peanut butter is one of the the easiest things out there to make and let me tell you it is more than worth it we'll add on our lid and then blend these until they reach a nice fine paste once that peanut Butter's gotten nice and creamy turn off your blender it really is cool that you can go from peanuts to this in no time with just a blender and if you want to make honey roasted peanut butter just put a bunch of Honey on them before you roast them or add honey to them while you're blending so many cool things that you can do at home that most people don't know about now into a new bowl we'll do a/2 cup or about 113 G of melted butter then 1 cup or about 125 G confection of sugar and to finish about a cup of our beautiful homemade peanut butter just look at that stuff flow I'm going to gently mix all of this up until it's a nice little paste what this will do is basically swirl nicely into our final fudge product to give us a nice even spread of peanut butter and also hopefully a nice little swirl of color here's how I like to combine our fudge at the end first I'll add all of the chocolate fudge mixture to a new bowl then whisk this up again so it's nice and well combined once I've combined that I'll add in about half of my peanut butter mixture then I'll stir to combine this this and this will give us that initial mix of peanut butter fudge once this is set I'll switch in our line baking dish then I'll put in most of that chocolate fudge to layer the whole thing I really can't tell you how amazing the smell is right now after this I'll smooth it down just a little bit to really make sure that it sets nicely and evenly then I'll start taking swirls in my peanut butter and placing it right through the chocolate which will hopefully give me these really nice patterns on my final product at this point your fudge is ready to cool let this sit for 2 hours and then we can cut into it and enjoy now finally after after 2 hours we're ready to cut into that fudge and I have to say it looks really good first I want to let you look at the pattern a little bit it actually looks like that peanut butter squat that we got on top worked really well I'm going to dig into here with the parchment and hopefully pull this thing all out in one nice piece this is a good sign that your fudge has set really well after this we'll peel back all of the parchment paper on the side of our fudge then I'll come in with my trusty knife and cut this into four nice big cubes to begin look at that clean cut if it wasn't set yet your knife probably would have stuff all over it and that's another good sign that you should probably let it set for a little bit longer also if you want to speed up the setting process you can definitely toss this in the fridge of the freezer for just a little while and that'll help speed things up just a little bit especially if you're impatient like me now I'll lift up a few pieces of my fudge and just take a look at the side of that there if you have a nice smooth edge to the fudge there you've done it that right there is some amazing homemade chocolate peanut butter fudge I cannot wait to dig into this to start take a look at my favorite piece of fudge right here I'm dead serious when I say that that's up there with the prettiest fudge I've ever seen and granted people don't often try to make it look pretty like like this but that looks beautiful I love that almost Splat likee pattern that we have on there with the peanut butter and the cooler part about that is that it really mixes up the bites you get every single time one of the things I will say I don't love about fudge typically beyond the fact that it's so rich and you can't eat much of it is that it's usually all the same whenever I get fudge I try to get a fudge that has something mixed around it a little bit and honestly if I were to redo this I would consider putting a few whole peanuts in there for some crunch but like I said I like creamy over crunchy so in this case I'm okay with it being all smooth but you get what I mean it's no fun just eating the the same thing over and over again that's why something like soup is sometimes pretty boring to me just sit there slurping over and over and over and it's just not fun I think I'm going to eat this thing like a brownie so let's just go for it m yeah first word wow second thing I'll say is that if you were to somehow Heat this up and give it to me which I know you couldn't really do cuz it would all melt down pretty quickly knowing what ingredients we have inside I would totally believe that this is a really rich decadent chocolate brownie it is so so good but the difference between a brownie and this is that this completely melts in your mouth yes there's a ton of sugar in there but the sugar coupled with that buttery and fatty creamy peanut butter and then of course the butter in there that coats your whole mouth with even more of that oily deliciousness I mean this thing is insane now I'm not going to take like 10 bites of it right now because I know I'm just going to get another cavity just got a couple more filled the other day but I will take another bite just to get a little bit more of that flavor that's seriously really good that's freaking awesome I'm just going to say it right now if you need to get a gift for somebody and you don't know what to get don't get it make homemade fud it's so incredibly chocolatey and the fact that we ground our own peanut butter means we still do get a little chunk of peanut once in a while yes it's super creamy but I actually really like one tiny little crunch once in a while there maybe I'm going back into one of those crunchy peanut butter phases I don't know this really is insane and I hope you give it a shot and in the meantime thank you for watching the video that is seriously so good please don't forget to subscribe and you got to join the notifications gang the other thing is all week every single time when I'm cooking all these videos I document everything on Instagram I have so many cool things there that I just don't show on YouTube I just don't have the time again don't forget to join that notifications gang once you subscribe and please also toss a like on the video until next timeso many great combinations in this world but perhaps the one that trumps them all is chocolate and peanut butter those two sound so good together now I know a lot of people are allergic to nuts but those of you that aren't know exactly what I'm talking about here anytime I think of peanut butter I think of the Everlasting debate creamy or crunchy you know it's funny over the years I've fluctuated back and forth between the creamy gang and the crunchy gang I think ultimately I always land on creamy and I'm not sure why something in the back of my mind always just reminds me of that Skippy creamy peanut butter and that light blue jar all those fake probably really bad for you synthetic ingredients but so so creamy and delicious I literally used to eat that stuff right out of the jar until I was choking on it but today we're going to take those two amazing things that complement each other so incredibly well and we're going to make some chocolate peanut butter fudge fudge is probably one of those things that you don't really have that many times a year you probably only get it once in a while when you go on some little trip and see some cute little fudge store maybe get a tiny little square to bring home to your family and friends at least that's always been my experience with fudge but why don't we make it at home it's so easy to make it's so rich it's so delicious it's so So Soft almost like biting into a brownie so I say it again why don't we make it more at home that's exactly what we're going to do today but we're going to use the chocolate from a cacao pot after all in this cacao series we always get our chocolate the freshest way possible overnight from Ecuador in a nice big fresh cacao pod like I said these cacao pods flew in overnight from Ecuador it's really funny they keep getting held up at customs and I'm not really sure why they may think I'm trying to smuggle things in through cacao pods but honestly I'm not I'm just trying to make good food now what I'm holding right here is what I like to call the hero caca CA pod every single time I get a shipment of caca pods I always pick out the one that I think is the most beautiful and there's always one let me show you right now I have about 6 to eight of these things right off the bat when I open it sometimes they're just ones that are too light green and almost just don't look quite ripe yet to me you can see on both of these right here that they're obviously beautiful but they don't quite have that beautiful red vibrancy that some of the other ones typically get then some of the other ones are nice and pretty too but again this one kind of has a mix of green and red and hasn't fully developed that beautiful reddish color that we get in this one right here and then of course since we're shipping them from so far away often times they come with a nice big crack right through them if I squeeze it just a little bit you'll see that it's already kind of open and I like to say that these are always okay to roast but I don't really like to eat the flesh off the ones that have big crack in them anyway I think you already know how we're going to open these cacao pods up so let's get some chopping going now of course we have to go full ninja on everybody right now today I'm doing something a little different and I've lined up four cacao pods right in front of me here my hands probably going to be bright right after this by now I've got an outer palm of Steel I'm going to start from right to left it's going to be a rapid fire series of chops so be prepared ah before I touch them let's check number one very solid clean crack I can very easily peel this one open I think that's good but you can be the judges of this number two kind of an odd fracture right across the middle and then a smaller hairline crack that goes across this way again I think I've cracked this one clean open this looks pretty set to me number three by far and away is the best and I actually have to hold it closed to make sure that the cacao seeds don't fall out I don't know exactly what happened to this one because it was perfect ly intact before I touched it but this one is shattered and last but not least the crack is small and almost towards the top of it so I didn't exactly get the middle of this one but very easy to peel this back and open it up so I think I've done a great job here now to start I'm going to break open my caca pods and put all the seeds into a bowl as always these are so so fresh and slimy the gooier and stickier they are the better the quality and by that I mean they're fresher the more juice these things retain when you get them shipped the quicker they were probably shipped out from their original destination and hopefully you can see that these babies are extremely juicy the flesh is practically dripping through my fingers here which means these are very fresh I'll just show you another example of them right out of the Pod here they're glistening with that juice around each seed and now when I pull it out listen I'll crack that last one open and push in those seeds for those of you that haven't seen the series before yes this is exactly where chocolate comes from there may not be a lot of this in your traditional Hershey's bar but in a true chocolate bar there's a lot of this cacao at this point I'd cover this up here and let these ferment for a week because I don't want to make you wait I've already done this and I've already placed some of the oven right behind me to roast them so I'll bring those out right now once these have come out of the oven they'll be golden brown and dark they'll have a really chocolatey nutty flavor to them the aroma permeates the entire room and it's incredible when I pick one of these seeds up it doesn't really look like much at first but when I crack it between my fingers that's when I get cacao nibs once I separate all that shell I'm left with these beautiful nibs that you've probably seen on top of smoothie bowls or maybe sprinkle the tops and baked goods but this is what's blended into chocolate so in order to make our fudge we're going to do exactly that to start with our spice grinder I'm going to pour in some of my caca nibs I'll follow it with just a little bit of sugar but keep in mind we're adding sugar to our fudge so we don't need this chocolate to be too sugary then almost like blending peanuts into peanut butter which we'll do momentarily I'm going to slowly pulse this until we get a chocolate paste once this is complete set it aside for later use in a small sauce pan I'll start with 3 cups or 600 g of sugar then I'll add 1 and 1/2 sticks also known as 3/4 cups or 170 G of butter then 2/3 top are 168 G of evaporated milk I'll slowly stir these to combine and then bring them to a boil with an instant read thermometer whisk this constantly and after about 5 minutes your mixture should get close to the desired temperature the second it hits 234° F on your instant read thermometer take it off the heat and when you do this immediately add in your chocolate chips whisk a little bit until that chocolate is well combined and fully melted it should really only take a few seconds for that to happen once this is mixed we're going to add about 7 oz of marshmallow fluff which should be about 1 jar when I was a kid I used to make peanut butter and fluff sandwiches all the time we called them fluffer Nutters and I always said that unless you were choking on your fluffer Nutter meaning there was so much peanut butter and fluff in that thing you weren't doing it right slowly stir in that fluff with that chocolate mixture it should really thicken up a lot at this point and you might need to sub in somebody else to help you stir what I will say though is that this workout right now is going to be worth it already you'll start smelling that amazing amazing flavor of fudge that you can't possibly mistake for anything else once you mixed that in also add just a little bit of vanilla extract this right here is my homemade vanilla extract and it's not quite yet as powerful as you might get at the store but you'll want to add in about one teaspoon when you do this step then whisk to combine this one last time and we'll set it aside for just a few moments for our peanut butter we'll sprinkle on about a cup of peanuts I'm just going to roast these a little bit more to get extra flavor out of them then of course we'll turn this into our own peanut butter by blending it I'll roast these for just a short bit at 350 F to make our peanut butter we'll slide all of our peanuts into this blender homemade peanut butter is one of the the easiest things out there to make and let me tell you it is more than worth it we'll add on our lid and then blend these until they reach a nice fine paste once that peanut Butter's gotten nice and creamy turn off your blender it really is cool that you can go from peanuts to this in no time with just a blender and if you want to make honey roasted peanut butter just put a bunch of Honey on them before you roast them or add honey to them while you're blending so many cool things that you can do at home that most people don't know about now into a new bowl we'll do a/2 cup or about 113 G of melted butter then 1 cup or about 125 G confection of sugar and to finish about a cup of our beautiful homemade peanut butter just look at that stuff flow I'm going to gently mix all of this up until it's a nice little paste what this will do is basically swirl nicely into our final fudge product to give us a nice even spread of peanut butter and also hopefully a nice little swirl of color here's how I like to combine our fudge at the end first I'll add all of the chocolate fudge mixture to a new bowl then whisk this up again so it's nice and well combined once I've combined that I'll add in about half of my peanut butter mixture then I'll stir to combine this this and this will give us that initial mix of peanut butter fudge once this is set I'll switch in our line baking dish then I'll put in most of that chocolate fudge to layer the whole thing I really can't tell you how amazing the smell is right now after this I'll smooth it down just a little bit to really make sure that it sets nicely and evenly then I'll start taking swirls in my peanut butter and placing it right through the chocolate which will hopefully give me these really nice patterns on my final product at this point your fudge is ready to cool let this sit for 2 hours and then we can cut into it and enjoy now finally after after 2 hours we're ready to cut into that fudge and I have to say it looks really good first I want to let you look at the pattern a little bit it actually looks like that peanut butter squat that we got on top worked really well I'm going to dig into here with the parchment and hopefully pull this thing all out in one nice piece this is a good sign that your fudge has set really well after this we'll peel back all of the parchment paper on the side of our fudge then I'll come in with my trusty knife and cut this into four nice big cubes to begin look at that clean cut if it wasn't set yet your knife probably would have stuff all over it and that's another good sign that you should probably let it set for a little bit longer also if you want to speed up the setting process you can definitely toss this in the fridge of the freezer for just a little while and that'll help speed things up just a little bit especially if you're impatient like me now I'll lift up a few pieces of my fudge and just take a look at the side of that there if you have a nice smooth edge to the fudge there you've done it that right there is some amazing homemade chocolate peanut butter fudge I cannot wait to dig into this to start take a look at my favorite piece of fudge right here I'm dead serious when I say that that's up there with the prettiest fudge I've ever seen and granted people don't often try to make it look pretty like like this but that looks beautiful I love that almost Splat likee pattern that we have on there with the peanut butter and the cooler part about that is that it really mixes up the bites you get every single time one of the things I will say I don't love about fudge typically beyond the fact that it's so rich and you can't eat much of it is that it's usually all the same whenever I get fudge I try to get a fudge that has something mixed around it a little bit and honestly if I were to redo this I would consider putting a few whole peanuts in there for some crunch but like I said I like creamy over crunchy so in this case I'm okay with it being all smooth but you get what I mean it's no fun just eating the the same thing over and over again that's why something like soup is sometimes pretty boring to me just sit there slurping over and over and over and it's just not fun I think I'm going to eat this thing like a brownie so let's just go for it m yeah first word wow second thing I'll say is that if you were to somehow Heat this up and give it to me which I know you couldn't really do cuz it would all melt down pretty quickly knowing what ingredients we have inside I would totally believe that this is a really rich decadent chocolate brownie it is so so good but the difference between a brownie and this is that this completely melts in your mouth yes there's a ton of sugar in there but the sugar coupled with that buttery and fatty creamy peanut butter and then of course the butter in there that coats your whole mouth with even more of that oily deliciousness I mean this thing is insane now I'm not going to take like 10 bites of it right now because I know I'm just going to get another cavity just got a couple more filled the other day but I will take another bite just to get a little bit more of that flavor that's seriously really good that's freaking awesome I'm just going to say it right now if you need to get a gift for somebody and you don't know what to get don't get it make homemade fud it's so incredibly chocolatey and the fact that we ground our own peanut butter means we still do get a little chunk of peanut once in a while yes it's super creamy but I actually really like one tiny little crunch once in a while there maybe I'm going back into one of those crunchy peanut butter phases I don't know this really is insane and I hope you give it a shot and in the meantime thank you for watching the video that is seriously so good please don't forget to subscribe and you got to join the notifications gang the other thing is all week every single time when I'm cooking all these videos I document everything on Instagram I have so many cool things there that I just don't show on YouTube I just don't have the time again don't forget to join that notifications gang once you subscribe and please also toss a like on the video until next time\n"