Buckeye Fudge Candy Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is buckeye candy made of? ›

Buckeyes are peanut butter fudge balls dipped in chocolate. Unlike classic peanut butter balls, a circle of peanut butter is left visible. The finished product resembles the nut that grows on the Ohio buckeye tree.

Storage Tips

Make sure your buckeyes stay fresh for as long as possible! The buckeyes should be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator to keep them nice and fresh. Stored in this way, they will keep for about 1 month (although good luck keeping them that long without eating them all, ha!).

How to Store Buckeyes. Buckeyes are fine to sit out at room temperature on holiday cookie plates for up to 24 hours, though if you're keeping them around for longer than that, store in an airtight container in the refrigerator where they'll stay fresh for up to 2 weeks. Buckeyes also freeze super well.

Why Is My Fudge Chewy & Gooey? When something goes wrong when making fudge, The culprit is likely to be the temperature. Chewy fudge results from the excessive moisture present in the mixture, which means the fudge was not cooked to the right temperature and could not be cooked enough to release the moisture.

Buckeyes are similar to peanut butter balls (or peanut-butter-filled chocolate balls), which are completely covered in chocolate. Named for their resemblance to the poisonous nut of the Ohio buckeye tree, the state tree of Ohio, this candy is particularly popular in Ohio and neighboring states.

The term buckeye has widely been used to describe residents of Ohio in general since the mid 1800s. It became popular when supporters of William Henry Harrison's successful presidential campaign carved souvenirs out of buckeye wood.

From leaves to bark, the buckeye tree is a poisonous plant. Removing the shell and roasting the nut neutralizes its harmful tannic acid content and makes for a protein-packed snack.

During September, buckeyes, which are large, shiny brown seeds, can be found underneath Aesculus trees. According to legend, carrying a pocketful of buckeyes brings good luck. Early Native Americans called these seeds buckeyes for their resemblance to the eyes of male deer, known as bucks.

And while highly poisonous, buckeye seeds contain much protein and were used as a food source by Native Americans who boiled and leached them to remove their toxins. Buckeyes are often small trees, with a spread nearly equal to their height.

Carrying buckeye seed is an old custom. They were carried as a folk remedy to ward off rheumatism, hemorrhoids and other assorted ailments. But mostly, it was considered a lucky charm. An old saying went, “You'll never find a dead man with a buckeye in his pocket.”

What does buckeye taste like? ›

Sweet, salty, crumbly-yet-smooth peanut butter balls dipped in dark chocolate, buckeyes are the retro no-bake confections that taste like peanut butter cups and look like seminude chocolate truffles.

How do you keep buckeyes from sweating? It's hard to entirely prevent condensation from a chilled candy (without adding preservatives), but there are a few things you can do to help. If you freeze the peanut butter balls before dipping, be sure to keep them covered as they await dipping.

You have to control two temperatures to make successful fudge: the cooking temperature AND the temperature at which the mixture cools before stirring to make it crystallize. Confectionery experiments have shown that the ideal cooking temperature for fudge is around 114 to 115 °C (237 to 239 °F).

Once a seed crystal forms, it grows bigger and bigger as the fudge cools. A lot of big crystals in fudge makes it grainy. By letting the fudge cool without stirring, you avoid creating seed crystals. Stirring would help sucrose molecules "find" one another and start forming crystals.

Fudge usually behaves this way when it's not cooked to a high enough temperature (due to oversight or a faulty candy thermometer).

Poisonous Plant: All parts of the plant (leaves, bark, fruit) are highly toxic if ingested – because of the glycoside aesculin, the saponin aescin, and possibly alkaloids. Symptoms are muscle weakness and paralysis, dilated pupils, vomiting, diarrhea, depression, paralysis, and stupor.

buckeye, any of about six species of North American trees and shrubs in the genus Aesculus of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae). The name refers to the resemblance of the nutlike seed, which has a pale patch on a shiny red-brown surface, to the eye of a deer.

Edible chestnuts are easy to tell apart from unrelated toxic species like horse chestnut or buckeye. Edible chestnuts belong to the genus Castanea and are enclosed in sharp, spine-covered burs. The toxic, inedible horse chestnuts have a fleshy, bumpy husk with a wart-covered appearance.