Desserts · Candy & fudge

Peanut butter fudge

Name: Peanut butter fudge
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 16 servings
Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups peanut butter; 2 3/4 cups powdered sugar; 8 tbsp butter; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1/4 tsp salt

Four ingredients, no thermometer, no soft-ball stage — the fudge that actually gets made. It is confectionery at its most concentrated, so it is cut small on purpose: sixteen squares from one tin.

Time: 15 min (10 prep + 5 cook)
Servings: 16
Per serving: 283 kcal
Protein: 6 g

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups peanut butter400 g
2 3/4 cups powdered sugar300 g
8 tbsp butter115 g
1 tsp vanilla extract5 g
1/4 tsp salt2 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Line a 20 cm (8-inch) square tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang to lift the slab out later.
Melt the butter and peanut butter together over low heat, stirring, until completely smooth — 3–4 minutes. Do not let it bubble.
Off the heat, beat in the vanilla, salt and then the icing sugar in three additions. It will go from pourable to stiff; that is the point.
Press into the tin, smooth the top, and chill at least 2 hours until firm.
Lift out and cut into 16 squares with a hot dry knife. Keeps two weeks in the fridge.

Natural peanut butter?

It separates and the fudge turns oily. Use the stabilised kind here — this is the one recipe where the stirred-not-poured jar is the right call.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Fat and refined carbohydrate converging the way engineered food does; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

9% of kcal

3% water

6 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

31%

36%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 4534 kcal goes into the pot, 822 g of ingredients comes out as ~810 g of food → 560 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 560
Protein: (9%); 12 g
Fat: (57%); 36 g
Carbohydrates: (34%); 48 g
of which sugar: 40 g
Fiber: 3 g
Sodium: 297 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More desserts

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.