Behind cookies, the next best popular Christmas baking tradition is making fudge. I personally have a few different recipes and flavor combinations that I cycle through each year but they always follow the same theme, quick, easy, and made in the microwave. Each recipe varies but typically you put everything in a bowl and melt it all together then pour it into a pan to solidify for a few hours. Then ta-da, you have fudge!
At my local Walmart, I found this box mix for fudge. Confused but intrigued, I grabbed it thinking seriously? Why do we need a box mix for fudge? When I got it home, I took a closer look and found this box contains evaporated milk, chocolate chips, and sugar. This is just a box full of all the ingredients you need to make fudge but sold all in one place with a recipe. Genius! I bake a lot but I hardly have the ingredients on hand when I want to make fudge and always have to navigate multiple aisles in the grocery store to get everything.
Let’s break down the pricing of this box mix. I looked up all of the prices for each ingredient at my local Walmart on their app so they are current prices. This fudge kit at Walmart is $6.46. The 12oz bag of nestle semi sweet chocolate chips is $4.28, the Nestle Carnation 5oz can of evaporated milk is $1.08, and the sugar could vary as I didn’t measure it to see the exact amount. I would estimate the total around $6 for all of these ingredients provided which means you are paying a fee for the packaging and convenience. You spend a few cents more so that you don’t have to locate all the needed ingredients in the store and you are given a recipe. The trade off sounds pretty good but let’s see how this fudge turns out.
All you need to make this fudge is 2 tablespoons of butter. To get started, you combine the sugar, evaporated milk, and butter in a sauce pan on the stove. Bring this mixture to a boil and keep it there for 4 minutes. Next you remove it from the heat and stir it for a bit to let it cool down before adding in the full bag of chocolate chips. As the chocolate melts in, the mixture thickens up quite a bit. Once fully mixed together, you move it into your prepared 8×8 square pan and place it in the fridge and ignore it for a few hours.
After 2 hours, I pulled my pan of fudge out of the fridge and it was nice and solid. I pulled the whole bock of fudge out of the pan and using a large knife cut it into 40 pieces that were tragically uneven. I was a little bit disappointed that the top was still wrinkly in appearance and it didn’t smooth at all while sitting. Between the uneven top and the wonky shaped pieces, it wasn’t the most attractive fudge. The taste however was fantastic. This mix made a really good fudge with good flavor and a nice solid texture. I’m not really surprised considering these are the same ingredients you would use for any other fudge but I felt this recipe worked out perfectly. Each piece was super sweet so I personally would’ve cut even smaller pieces or better yet, added something to the fudge to break up the sweetness. Nuts, marshmallows, cookie bits, peppermint pieces, anything along these lines would be the perfect additive to the fudge.
This fudge kit was super easy and convenient and the finished product tasted great. You can easily spice it up with any additions making this the perfect base for a holiday fudge. If you don’t have a good fudge recipe or you’re in a hurry at the store, this product is going to be perfect for you.
This mixture as prepared totals 3480 calories. The package suggests 24 servings which brings each piece to 145 calories. If you end up with 40 like me, they are 87 calories each.
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