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If you're making fudge, does it matter whether you use butterfat or vegatable fat? Or is it important to get actual, real butter?

For that matter, I've seen recipies for fudge which demand single cream, double cream or even clotted cream. What effect is this likely to have on the final product? (Taking into account that presumably whoever wrote the recipe already took into account the different fat content of these products.)

nico
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MathematicalOrchid
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    I removed the first four paragraphs, which just added irrelevant background noise to the question, and were about health issues which are off-topic here. – nico Sep 29 '12 at 23:44
  • Not so much "health issues", more like "market forces which make it harder than you'd think to buy actual butter"... – MathematicalOrchid Sep 30 '12 at 10:14
  • in any case, even global market politics are off-topic here. Plus, you cannot really generalize, I have no issues in finding good butter where I leave. – nico Sep 30 '12 at 10:48
  • @MathematicalOrchid Still, it seems like you might benefit from reading the [faq]. Health is always off-topic, and including claims of healthiness/unhealthiness is a huge red flag for us. We do also prefer that questions focus on, well, questions - this is a question and answer site, not a discussion forum. – Cascabel Sep 30 '12 at 22:35

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Like you, I've found a wide variety of fats in fudge recipes. To name a few;

The chocolate fudge recipe in The Joy of Cooking cookbook calls for both half-and-half and heavy cream. (From my home copy of that cookbook)

On this Macinac Island website, there's a recipe that uses a combination of whole milk and Crisco (vegetable shortening). http://www.mackinac-island-insider-tips.com/aunt-merrys-fudge-recipe.html

... and I found a recipe for Devonshire Clotted Cream Fudge that uses other ingredients I'm not familiar with such as golden syrup and castor sugar: http://www.food.com/recipe/devonshire-clotted-cream-fudge-238801

I think you may be obligated to experiment by making different kinds of fudge and discover your favorite homemade fudge. Sounds like a sweet adventure!

Kristina Lopez
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  • For the reference of any future Americans reading this, "golden syrup" is inverted sugar syrup (I suppose you could substitute a ~50% fructose HFCS if that's not available) and "castor sugar" is a white cane sugar with finer-than-normal granule size (substitute whatever you'd usually use for cake baking). – Jules Jun 25 '13 at 09:26