Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Fudge Recipes

You will love these old fashioned peanut butter fudge recipes. There's little that compares to the wonderfully nutty, creamy taste of this decadent candy. It's the perfect confection for munching on at Christmas time and special family occasions.

Emily's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Fudge Recipe

Submitted by Emily Busse, Willimantic, CT

Favorite Peanut Butter Fudge

Ingredients:

1 pound butter of your choice
2 pounds confectioner's sugar
28 ounces peanut butter of your choice
Wax paper
8x8 or 9x9-inch pan

Melt butter completely over medium heat, then add all the peanut butter and melt that with the butter. Once both ingredients are melted, take off stove immediately.

Lastly add the confectioner's sugar and mix well and fast before mixture starts to harden.

Place in an 8x8 or 9x9 inch pan and press down all over to make even. Then take a waxed piece of paper a little bigger than your pan and place on top of fudge and press down everywhere and smooth the fudge out. (Leave waxed paper on.)

Finally, place pan in freezer for an hour or two till it hardens or leave in fridge most of the day. This old fashioned fudge is a favorite! —Emily

Mom's Favorite Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Fudge Recipes

Mom's Recipe Scrapbooks (1920s)

Easy Peanut Butter Fudge

Cook together 2 cups granulated sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls peanut butter, and 1/2 cup milk until it forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water. Add 1/2 teaspoonful vanilla, cool and beat until creamy. Pour into a buttered pie plate and when nearly cold, cut it in small squares.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

Ingredients:

2 cups white sugar
1 small tin of Evaporated Milk (5 ounces/150 ml)
2 squares of unsweetened chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1 cup peanut butter, creamy or crunchy

If evaporated milk is unavailable, you may substitute dairy cream for an equally rich tasting fudge.

Method:

Boil to a soft stage the sugar, milk, chocolate, and butter. Remove from heat. Add vanilla and peanut butter. Beat until thick and spread in a buttered dish.

Old Time Caramel Peanut Candy

The Times Cook Book, No. 2 (1905)

Caramel Peanut Candy

Two cups granulated sugar, 1 cup chopped nuts, no water, slow fire. Put a layer of very finely chopped nuts in a greased platter or dish, 1/4 inch thick. Put sugar over slow fire — it melts very slowly, then gets hard in lumps and melts again.

When entirely free from lumps or grains, remove and pour over nuts, stirring as you pour. When cool divide in squares.

Peanut Butter Stuffed Dates

Fruit And Candies (c. 1920)

Peanut Butter Stuffed Dates

Wash dates thoroughly, dry them and remove stones. Fill the hollow dates with a little peanut butter. Press into shape and roll in confectioners' sugar.

About the Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Fudge Recipes

These are some of the earliest recipes for peanut butter fudge ever published. Did you know that peanut butter was not mentioned in nineteenth-century recipes, as it had yet to be invented?

The "Process of Preparing Nut Meal" had been patented by the Kellogg brothers in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1895, and peanut butter was first sold as a snack food at the Universal Exposition in St. Louis, in 1904.

However, it wasn't until the early 1920s that creamy-smooth peanut butter as we all know it was first introduced in stores.

Some early peanut candies did, however, contain finely chopped peanuts, an unprocessed, homemade type of peanut butter.

Modern peanut butter can be substituted in any of these candy recipes, if you wish, but the finely chopped peanuts taste delicious as well.