Cooking Experiment: Vegan Maple Almond Fudge sans Candy Thermometer

Gathering the ingredients. This recipe calls for so much maple syrup!

So, last week I got an itch to make some fudge, and a rainy Saturday sealed the deal!

I’ve never made fudge from scratch before, and I don’t own a candy thermometer, so this was a fly by the seat of my pants operation. Want to see how it turned out? Here’s the scoop…

Veganizing the ingredients seemed simple enough. Here’s the vegan ingredients list:

2c plus 1T maple syrup
3/4c soy creamer
1t vanilla extract
3/4c chopped almonds

OK, so now let’s go through the recipe. I’ll insert my moments of self-doubt/panic in italics.

Grease an 8×8 inch dish.

In a medium saucepan, combine maple syrup and creamer. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Did they mean a rolling boil? I stopped stirring when it hit a nice simmer.

Then heat without stirring to between 234 and 240 degrees F (112 to 116 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms a soft ball that flattens when removed from the water and placed on a flat surface. Remove from heat, and let cool until lukewarm.

This was incredibly nerve-wracking without candy thermometer! It took over 30 minutes and a lot of experimentation with temperature. I was scared to burn everything, so I had it on low for around 30 minutes. Upping the heat to medium-low thickened things up really quickly. Maybe 5-7 minutes later, I’d reached what I hoped was the soft ball stage!

It took a long time, but it finally got to the soft ball stage!

Beat mixture until it thickens and loses its gloss. Quickly fold in vanilla and nuts, and spread in prepared pan.

It was less spreading into the pan than pouring into the pan. I was still pretty nervous at this point.

Let cool completely before cutting.

It took probably another hour and change before I was sure things had cooled off.

Not quite what I was going for, but still very delicious!

OK, so I’m not really sure that the end results here were fudge, but I also don’t think the lack of candy thermometer was the problem. It ended up more like delicious maple sugar candy, which is actually one of my favorite sweet treats.

Still, I’m a little bummed that I didn’t successfully make fudge, and I think the soy creamer was to blame. I’ve used Silk creamer in place of cream in recipes before, and it doesn’t always hold up well to heat. It tends to break down and lose its creaminess. Next time, I think I’d use regular soy milk or invest in some mimicreme, which I hear is the ultimate in nondairy creamers.

Have you guys had any luck making vegan maple fudge? I’m still thinking about trying again, since the results were still really tasty, even though it’s not really what I meant to make!

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• Veganize It: Maple Almond Fudge