I've been making this fudge since high school, and it's probably one of the creamiest, most flavorful fudges I've ever had (not to be a braggart or anything… But I've been told it's heaven in your mouth, haha). I made it for Sarah's shower, and then brought it to work and was ordered to share the recipe, so here it is! This is just the base recipe, and I will tell you how to change it up at the end.

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 6 oz butter (Though, I've been making it with about half the amount of butter, and it's still fantastic!)
• 1/2 t vanilla extract

Directions

1. Slice the butter into thin strips—as thin as you can make it, especially if it's not room temperature.
2. Combine chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk into medium saucepan. Melt over low heat, constantly stirring until completely lump-free.
3. Remove saucepan from heat and add butter and extract. Stir constantly until mixture is smooth… This sometimes takes a while, especially if you paused in the middle to take pictures, so I hope you have good upper-arm stamina! At the end, the mixture should slip off your spatula.
4. Once the fudge is smooth, pour it into an 8x8 or 9x9 pan, lined with wax paper, plastic wrap, or aluminum foil. Refrigerate overnight, and then enjoy!

Variations

I have made countless variations to this recipe… The most basic way you can play with it is to change up the extract to make chocolate-orange fudge, chocolate-raspberry fudge, etc. I have found that with raspberry extract particularly, you may have to use as much as 2-3 teaspoons of extract before you get a good flavor in there… just add little by little until it tastes good.

As you can see in my images, I played with the composition of the chips—I used 1 cup semi-sweet, 1/2 cup milk, and 1/2 cup mint chips. This worked pretty well, though I still added a dab of mint extract because I just love the strong flavors in my fudge. It also was a little more difficult to melt, because the melting point of the mint chips was higher, but it still worked out fine. You can play with the proportions and types of chips (more milk, for example, or using dark chocolate chips) depending on your preferences.

You could also add mix-ins, such as nuts or those tiny M&Ms, or even leave some of the lumps in so it's kindof like a chocolate-chocolate chip fudge. I have made it with less butter (to cut down on the fat content) and it was still good, though not quite as creamy… I haven't tried with low-fat or fat-free butter, though I would definitely not use margarine, because it won't melt and incorporate as well. The great part about this recipe is that it's so simple, you can really make it your own!