This Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Fudge is creamy, smooth and delicious. It’s just like your grandma use to make! We think it is the BEST fudge recipe.

My family loves fudge, especially during the holiday season. My husband is usually the one that makes this famous peanut butter fudge. Most everyone of our friends and family requests him to make a batch when they visit during the holidays.

If you are looking for other traditional fudge recipes consider making my Fantasy Fudge, Traditional Fudge with Walnuts or my easy Strawberry Microwave Fudge.

 

Why you’ll love this Peanut Butter Fudge recipe

• It’s an old-fashioned peanut butter fudge recipe that is made from scratch with six simple pantry ingredients.
• Since it is a creamy and rich fudge, one batch goes a long way. Perfect for a candy treat at a holiday party or potluck.
• It’s a perfect holiday candy gift. Add it to a tin or place it in plastic wrap, add a bow and you have an inexpensive gift.
• Chocolate fudge is great but, I still think peanut butter fudge is the BEST!

Peanut Butter Fudge Ingredients

The six ingredients needed for this Traditional Peanut Butter Fudge recipe are quite simple. It’s made without marshmallows or frosting like many other recipes.

• Peanut Butter – A creamy store-bought peanut butter works great for this recipe or Jif Peanut Butter was what my grandma used. You could possibly use a crunchy peanut butter but, I have never tried it with nuts.
• REAL Butter – Salted or unsalted butter will work. We typically have salted butter in our house so, that is what we used for this recipe. Do not use something like margarine.
• Corn Syrup
• Sugar – NOT Confectioners sugar (powdered sugar) like other fudge recipes use.
• Evaporated Milk – NOT sweetened condensed milk.
• Vanilla

Of course, you could always use Homemade Peanut Butter for this fudge recipe too!

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Easy Peanut Butter Fudge

Once you’ve gotten all your ingredients around, making Homemade Peanut Butter Fudge is quite quick and easy. To make a batch of this fudge you will want to have a candy thermometer or take a peak at this post on What Soft Ball Stage is.

1. Mix Sugar, Corn Syrup and Evaporated milk in large pan and cook over medium heat. Sir occasionally. Mixture will begin boiling. If it boils close to the top of the pan, reduce the heat slightly.
2. Continue cooking until mixture reaches soft ball stage (230-240 degrees). You can test for this by seeing if a small amount of the mixture forms a ball while in cold water, but flattens once removed from the water.
3. When it reaches Soft-Ball stage, remove from heat. Take butter and grease inside of glass baking dish. Add remainder of butter and vanilla extract and stir until butter is melted and incorporated. Add peanut butter and continue stirring until mixture start to lose its’ sheen. Then pour into buttered baking dish and allow to cool.

Substitutions

Can’t find the ingredients for our easy fudge recipe? Here are a couple substitutions you can try:

• Evaporated Milk – Since evaporated milk is just normal milk that’s had some of the water content cooked out, there are a few easy substitutes. Try using normal whole milk, half-and-half, heavy cream, or some combination of those 3 as a substitute. Note that evaporated milk is a bit creamier than normal milk since some of the water is evaporated, so we’d definitely recommend incorporating some cream.
• Corn Syrup – We’ve always made our Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Fudge with corn syrup but there’s other options. Instead of corn syrup, you could also use a brown sugar- either light brown sugar or dark brown sugar, depending on how much of that molasses flavor you want in your fudge.

Variations

Looking for ways to change this recipe up? Here are a couple of ideas for making the homemade fudge a bit different:

• Loaded Peanut Butter Fudge – We normally make our Peanut Butter Fudge with a creamy peanut butter, but maybe you want a little crunch in yours? Outside of using a crunchy peanut butter, you could also mix in some crushed peanuts or any other sort of crushed nuts.
• Other Nut Butter Fudge Recipes – If you’ve ever looked around your grocery store, you’ve probably noticed all sorts of different nut butters. So many of these could work in our fudge recipe: try making almond butter fudge or cashew butter fudge next!

Storage / Freezing

Storage: Once your fudge is made let it cool on your countertop. If you are in a pinch you could place in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Fudge is best if enjoyed at room temperature. Store the fudge in the fridge for up to 2 weeks in an air-tight container or wrap in plastic wrap. I personally add small piece of parchment paper between layers.

Freezing: You can also freeze this old fashion peanut butter fudge if you need more long-term storage. You will want to wrap in an air-tight container before placing in the freezer. It will last for about 2-3 months when frozen.

FAQ

Do you have questions about this recipe? Here are the answers to the most commonly asked questions about homemade peanut butter fudge.

Other Easy Fudge Recipes

Looking for other fudge recipes that are easy to make? Try these:

Other Christmas Treat Recipes

Here are some other candy recipes that are great for all year long and during the holidays: