How to Make Fudge

Empty one 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk into a large microwave-safe bowl.

This is the ingredient doing all the work that a candy thermometer and a soft-ball stage do in traditional fudge. It is already thick and already sweet, and it sets on its own as it cools. That is the entire reason this version is hard to get wrong.

Do not substitute evaporated milk. It looks similar on the shelf, it is a completely different product, and fudge made with it will not set.

Add 2 cups, about 12 oz, of semi-sweet chocolate chips straight on top. No need to stir yet.

Use chocolate you would happily eat on its own. With three ingredients there is nothing to hide behind, and cheap chips with a waxy coating give you fudge with a waxy finish.

Semi-sweet balances the condensed milk. Milk chocolate chips make it very sweet indeed, though plenty of people prefer that.

One teaspoon of vanilla extract.

This is also the single point where you change the whole character of the batch. Almond extract turns it into almond fudge, peppermint extract into mint. Same quantity whichever you use.

Use extract rather than essence if you have the choice. In a recipe this short it is noticeable.

Line an 8x8 or 9x9 pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang on two opposite sides.

Do this now, not later. Set fudge does not come out of a bare pan, and the overhang is the handle you lift the whole slab out by. Trying to line a pan with one hand while melted chocolate stiffens in the bowl is a bad few minutes.

An 8x8 gives thicker squares, a 9x9 gives thinner ones. Either is right.

Microwave on high for 30 seconds, pull the bowl out, stir, and repeat.

Every single burst gets a stir. This is not caution for its own sake - chocolate seizes and turns grainy if you blast it continuously, and it cannot be rescued once it does.

It usually takes 90 seconds to two minutes in total. A saucepan over low heat does exactly the same job if you would rather not use the microwave.

Keep stirring until the mixture is glossy and uniform with no lumps at all.

This is the difference between smooth fudge and grainy fudge, and it takes longer than you expect. Keep going until the spatula leaves clean ribbons that hold their shape for a second before settling.

If it looks dull rather than glossy, it needs more stirring, not more heat.

Pour it in while it is still hot and loose, and scrape the bowl out properly.

It thickens as it cools and gets steadily harder to move, so do not stop to do anything else between the last stir and the pour.

Press it into the corners with the spatula and level the top, then tap the pan on the counter a couple of times to settle it.

Refrigerate until firm, about two hours. Lift the slab out by the parchment overhang and cut it into small squares. This is rich, so cut smaller than instinct suggests - 36 pieces from an 8x8 is about right.

Stored in an airtight container in the fridge it keeps for around a month.

Melt the base exactly as above, then stir in half a cup of roughly chopped nuts once the mixture is already smooth. Pecans, walnuts and slivered almonds all work.

Add them at the end rather than before melting, so they stay in distinct pieces instead of breaking up in the stirring.

Swapping the vanilla for the matching extract, almond extract with almonds, doubles the flavour without adding an ingredient.

Marbled. Split the condensed milk between two bowls. One cup of white chocolate chips in one, one cup of semi-sweet in the other, half a teaspoon of vanilla each. Melt both separately, spoon alternating blobs into the pan, then drag a butter knife through in an S shape. Two or three passes only - keep swirling and it all turns one shade of brown.

White chocolate. Swap the semi-sweet chips for white chocolate chips and change nothing else.

Mint. Replace the vanilla with a teaspoon of peppermint extract, or use half mint baking chips and half semi-sweet and marble them.