Maple Fudge: The Hows and the Horrors

The definitive recipe, if you dare.

“A little taste of heaven in your mouth.” That’s how one customer described our maple fudge, and that’s how I’ve always thought of it. It even inspired a poem by one who first tried it:

my life was fine
my life was pure
my friendships golden
my future sure

but now i’ve tasted
fudge so soft
the crave awakens
an urging rough

my nights awake
i lie and sweat
i can no more
my tongue is wet!

who’s respon’sbl
for this mess?
on who the karma
that i am less

like waves a ‘lapping
on my soul’s shore
heaving with torture
“I want more!”

Marc-Antoine Brodeur

It was the quest for this alchemy of maple and dairy that drove me for at least a year, through many a failed attempt, to figure out how to make it. I can say now that I can finally boast a very high success rate, although things still go a little sideways from time to time. Maple fudge is a temperamental mistress – she likes to withhold her favours from time to time, just to keep you grateful and humble.

“But fudge isn’t that hard!” some might say. Ah, but have you tried it with pure maple syrup? Being a food purist, and a maple producer, naturally I wanted to make a fudge with no added cane sugar. Sugar often crystallizes more easily than maple syrup, and it is the magic of crystallization that transforms a gooey thick syrup into the solid-yet-mouth-melting consistency we call fudge (or the French call sucre à la crème). I could have made my odyssey to fudgedom so much easier had I just cut my precious maple syrup with a bit of this white interloper, but nay! – I would not let this imported commodity sully my pure, local ingredient.

Many people keep their maple fudge recipes a closely guarded secret. But not I! I am ready to share my hard won maple fudge making process with the world. The world deserves more maple fudge, and I can only make and sell so much of it. However, this will be my first paywalled post on Farmer’s Table. If you want to read the recipe below, you’ll have to take out a paid subscription for at least a month (which will set you back $5).

(Or if you don’t care that much about fudge, but just want to support what I’m doing here, consider becoming a paid subscriber. This is ad-free, algorithm-free, click-bait-free, AI-free, SEO-free, real human-to-human communication over the internet, trying to get back to what we all dreamed the internet would be 30 years ago and away from the increasingly infuriating and invasive beast it has become. But it is not time-free on my part, and if you see value in what I’m sending into your inbox every couple of weeks, then I hope you’ll consider taking the plunge into the elite club of paid subscribers (i.e. the cool kids).

And now, on to the recipe...