When life gives you lemons, you make this smooth and creamy lemon fudge. It’s a delicious sweet treat and, using a homemade easy lemon simple syrup, sweetened condensed milk and white chocolate, this fudge is super easy to make at home.
You may (or may not) have come across my recipe for lemon fudge before. I wanted to get some gorgeous new shots of this fudge and at the same time, I did some extra testing to make the recipe easier and even better than it was originally. Well, I’m happy to say, I succeeded in both.
This updated recipe is now even easier to make than the original version and it uses the flavour of real lemons, turned into a simple syrup instead of the lemon extract that the original called for. The flavour of this fudge is like lemony white chocolate and it’s lovely.
Once you’ve made a lemon simple syrup – which just happens to be wonderful on everything from waffles to pancakes, in cocktails and over cakes – you just need three more ingredients – butter, white chocolate and sweetened condensed milk.
I add a touch of yellow food colouring to brighten it up, then sprinkle over white and yellow sprinkles. I’ve also added edible yellow glitter before, to make it fun and sparkly.
Is This Traditional Fudge?
If you’re looking for a traditional fudge recipe, this is not it, however, it does have the classic fudge texture and richness. This is a cheats version, and I’m ok with that since success in trying to master the traditional method has so far eluded me. It ends up in tears. Real big girl sobs 🙁 No, not really but it can be seriously frustrating. That’s why I love this recipe. It’s pretty hard to go wrong.
How To Make Easy Lemon Fudge
The lemon simple syrup just takes some lemon juice, sugar and lemon zest, boiled in a pan for around 10 minutes until it’s reduced by half and thick and syrupy. See more about this simple syrup here.
In a fresh pan, melt together the sweetened condensed milk, white chocolate and butter. Once it’s smooth add in the lemon syrup and zest and give it a good mix.
Pour it into a lined 8 inch square baking tin, then scatter white and yellow sprinkles all over the top. Let it sit at room temperature for half an hour, then transfer to the fridge to set for at least 6 hours or overnight.
Turn It Into Lemon Meringue Fudge
You can turn this easy lemon fudge into lemon meringue fudge, just by crumbling up some shop-bought meringue and scattering in the baking tin before or after you pour the fudge in.
How To Store it
This bright and zesty fudge is quite soft which is what makes it so creamy and smooth but this does mean it should be kept in the fridge at all times. Left out at room temperature, it will soften and become a little sticky.
Let the fudge set in the fridge overnight so it’s super cold, then use a sharp knife to cut it into squares. At this point, I like to wrap each one with a little rectangle of baking paper, just so that it’s not so sticky to handle.
After that, it’s fine stored in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
It can also be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months, again in an airtight container. It can be eaten straight from the freezer as it never freezes rock hard due to the sugar content. The texture of fudge that has been frozen will be ever so slightly grainy but still totally delicious.
Great For Gifting
Lemon fudge makes a great food gift since it keeps so well. Pack it up in a cute box and gift it for Mothers Day, Birthdays, Easter or Christmas. You can use this simple gift tag too – just print it out on some quality paper, cut them out and fold in the centre. Just punch a little hole and tie it with a pretty ribbon.
Click here to Pin this recipe for later!
After my Salted Caramel Fudge, this is definitely my favourite fudge recipe. Since fudge is very sweet, the lemon tang is a lovely contrast. I don’t know about you but I have a lot of lemon lovers in my life, so being able to give these little easy lemon fudge squares as a gift is so fun.
Click the image below for the lemon fudge gift tag. You can print many of them by pasting this image into a Word doc or Google docs.
More Easy Fudge Recipes
- Butter Popcorn Easy Fudge
- Milo Tim Tam Chocolate Fudge
- Caramel Peanut Fudge
- Easy Dark Chocolate Fudge
- Salted Caramel Fudge
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Easy Lemon Fudge
Ingredients
- 3-4 lemons (notes)
- ½ cup white granulated sugar
- 1 can (395ml / 14oz) sweetened condensed milk
- 115 g unsalted butter
- 550 g (2 3/4 cups) white chocolate, roughly chopped
- zest of 1/2 a lemon, extra
- Yellow food colouring
- Sprinkles or edible glitter
Instructions
- Line an 8×8 inch square baking tin with baking paper.
- To make the lemon simple syrup, use a peeler to peel just the yellow part of one lemon (you don’t want the white part).
- Juice the lemons until you have ½ cup of strained lemon juice (make sure it's free of pulp and pips).
- Place the peel from one lemon, lemon juice and sugar in a small heavy-based saucepan over medium heat.
- Bring it to a boil and cook stirring every so often for 10-12 minutes, until thickened and reduced by about half. It should be a pale honey colour. Set aside.
- Combine the sweetened condensed milk, butter and white chocolate in a medium heavy-based saucepan. Stir over low-medium heat, without boiling, until everything is melted and combined.
- Take it off the heat and add the lemon syrup, lemon zest and a drop or two of yellow food colouring (if using). Mix to combine.
- Pour the mixture into the lined baking tin. Top with sprinkles.
- Leave for 30 minutes to cool at room temperature, then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
- Cut into squares and serve.
Notes
- For the lemon syrup, you’ll use just the peel of one and 1/2 cup of lemon juice. Peel or zest all the lemons and you can freeze it for use in the future or for adding a little zing to fried or roast chicken.
- Turn this into Lemon Meringue Fudge by adding crushed up shop-bought meringues to the pan before or after the fudge has been poured in.
- Get the gift tag and make a gift of it.
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34 Comments on “Easy Lemon Fudge”
The fudge never fully hardened. Was a sticky mess to cut even after being in fridge over night.
Hello Sarah. Sorry you didn’t have luck with it. It just means it wasn’t cooked long enough or your syrup wasn’t thick enough in the beginning.
Tried this recipe yesterday,did everything that it said to do however I got taffy. Great taste and everyone that has tried it loves it. I am going to try to roll into little balls freeze and dip in dark chocolate. Will try again, not sure what happened.
Candy
Sorry to hear the texture wasn’t quite right, though it does still sound delicious. It just sounds like it wasn’t cooked long enough to get to setting stage.
When I was late teens or early twenties we stopped at a fruit stand on a family trip. They also had gourmet fudge. I got some lemon fudge and loved it. I’ve never been able to find it an a store again. Many moons later I decided to try to make some myself. I bypassed several recipes that called for lemon extract or using lemon pudding because that wasn’t what I wanted. Found you recipe. Delicious! After all these years it was exactly what I was wanting. Thank you!
That’s exactly what I was going for, Jana. So happy you love it and you found the recipe that reminds of a special memory.
I adore anything LEMON. THIS TAKES IT ALL…WOW…SOO CREAMY AND NOT OVER SWEET. DO IT, YOU WILL LIKE ME WANT ANOTHER BATCH MADE. THAT I ASSURE YOU,
So happy you love it, Mary.
Enjoyed this recipe! I omitted the yellow food coloring and still think it has a nice color. The tip to have the liquid reduced by about half saved my fudge 🍋 I thought by the color it would be ready and it had been the allotted time, but it had not reduced enough so back on the heat it went!
I used white chocolate morsels (the chip kind for cookies) and it was a lot of mixing to get it melted and smoothed but the desired texture was achieved in the end product.
So happy you love it, Cooking Lass.
This sounds very delicious to taste. Will be trying it for my son in law’s birthday very soon
Can you use white chocolate chips? Is this fudge soft, cherry and sticky?
Chewy not cherry haha
Chocolate chips are generally made to hold their shape so don’t melt as easily. Yes this is a soft and chewy fudge. It should be stored in the fridge and will become sticky at room temperature.
Good evening
I happened upon this recipe and also thought what a stunning fudge and as I love love ❤️ lemons 🍋 I thought I would read the comments and see if it is worth saving to my library….
Well I haven’t made them yet, but I just want to compliment Marie for her dedication in replying to each ones comments and with patience and love guides everyone through the trouble spots!
One thing seems to be the syrup consistency…so I will remember that in my attempt!
Thank you Marie
Thank you so much for the kind words Nicole. I’d love to hear how you like it 🙂
0 stars if I could it was way to liquidy and even with an extra 2 cups of sugar it still was to liquidy this is probably the worst recipe of fudge out there and any other fudge recipe is 20x better than this don’t try it’s a waste of time, energy and your ingredients
You have given it 0 stars by not adding any stars. Have you let it chill and set? If still runny, then you didn’t reduce the syrup properly. You don’t need to add more sugar as that will make it inedible. You are always welcome to ask questions, Dominic and I’m happy to help troubleshoot but to say “any other fudge recipe is 20x better” is quite a generalisation as I highly doubt you’ve tried every other fudge recipe, nor have you made this one correctly. As you can see by my images the recipe works. Sorry it’s not to your liking.
It looks so yummy! Thank you
Thank you Cheryl
7: “Take it off the heat and add the lemon syrup, lemon zest and a drop or two…”
The zest is in the syrup by now isn’t it? Did I miss a step? Was there supposed to be two lots of zest?
Thanks for the recipe, I found the mix was not quite tangy enough, so used 3 lemons zest and juice, plus some extra lime juice!
There are two lots of zest. Ingredient number 6 is extra lemon zest. Just finely zest that and it will stay in the fudge. The large pieces of zest from step 2 is the ones you remove.
Hi, can I use white compound for this..?
You could but the flavour won’t be as good
I moved to a new place that has a lemon tree in the backyard and it’s been raining lemons all summer! I found this recipe as I was looking for things to do with all the fruit, and it was a winner with me, my housemates, and many of my friends.
My one question is about it’s ability to withstand heat. You mention it’s not a “real fudge” and I noticed yesterday when it was out of the fridge for a little while that it became very soft and gooey. Does really fudge not do that? Is there a way to have this fudge keep it’s shape at room temperature?
This is such a great treat, thank you for sharing the recipe!
Hello Juliana, no this is a soft fudge and best enjoyed straight from the fridge. If you think about the ingredients, we’re relying mainly on white chocolate to solidify this as everything else is liquid. You could certainly cook it longer to try to caramelise the sugar but then you’ll end up with brown lemon fudge. Totally fine and it can certainly work but I really wanted a nice yellow fudge. Hope that all makes sense 🙂
Hi, i attempted this yeaterday and left it overnight in the fridge as directed. What I’ve got is more like lemon curd. It tastes lovely just hasn’t set properly. do you know where I went wrong? Or have any ideas as to how to use it now as you can’t even cut it
Hi Sophie, this would just be because your lemon syrup didn’t reduce far enough. You can put the whole lot back in the pan and bring it to a low bubble stirring constantly so that it doesn’t burn. Keep it there for 5-6 minutes and you should see it thicken further. You could also add more white chocolate or freeze it and eat it frozen 🙂
Hi! Thanks for sharing this beautiful recipe, I love lemons!!!
Can you please tell me how much syrup goes into the recipe if you’re using pre-cooked syrup?! I made citronat (candid lemons) which is a vital ingredient in my grandma’s German gingerbread recipe. I was looking for a recipe to use the syrup that is now a leftover product and found yours.
I have about 400ml of syrup, made from sugar and lemon juice. Would this work with your recipe?
Thanks a lot! Kind wishes
Lily
Sounds lovely Lily, you need about 1/2 cup or 125ml. As I’m not sure how strong your syrup is, maybe just add 1/3 cup. Do a little taste test once everything is combine (careful to let it cool a bit first) then see if you need the rest. I’d love to hear how it goes
I’d greatly appreciate a video! That believe that would be quite helpful. I cooked the mixture on medium to medium low heat the entire time, usually keeping the heat closer to the lower end of the range.
Hi Heather, I’ve made this recipe easier and even more delicious and it will be republished with this new recipe in a few days. I’ve emailed you the recipe for early access if you were wanting to try it again.
Hey do you have video of it..?
Not yet Amita, but I will add one in the future.