Leave Santa something different this year. Forgo hours of baking cookies for Santa and instead make him this Easy Peppermint Christmas Fudge recipe in just 5 minutes! Not only can you make this recipe in an instant, but you also don’t have to turn on your oven! Best news ever. I know. It’s like a gift within a gift. Or, if you don’t do the whole Santa thing…then make this fudge for a holiday party, work party, give tubs of it as gifts or just make it for yourself! You won’t regret it. I promise!

Easy Peppermint Christmas Fudge

You are not going to believe how easy this recipe is! My kids can make it all on their own which means they do, and now yours will too and…you’ll thank them! Not only will you not have to make it yourself, but this means you’ll always have a delicious treat that you can sneak away with when you need a little escape. I’m speaking from personal experience. Those 5 minutes of a sweet, delicious, chocolate break can make all the difference in my day!

Let’s grab 5 simple ingredients and get started!

Ingredients

I like to use Nestle Toll House semi-sweet chocolate chips but you can use any morsel your heart desires. You could do white chocolate or dark chocolate too!

How to prepare the fudge

Combine 3 cups of chocolate chips, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk, 1/4 cup of butter and 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract in a microwave safe bowl. Place bowl in microwave on high for 3 minutes (stir one time midway through).

This is what the mixture will look like when you take it out of the microwave after 3 minutes.

You’ll need to then stir it A LOT. I like to use a rubber spatula to scrape the bowl as I stir.

Keep stirring…

Until it looks like this! It should be creamy and not lumpy. Your arm will get a good workout.

Then smooth out your fudge mixture into a glass baking pan sprayed with a non-stick spray. Be quick about it because you don’t want the fudge mixture to cool down too much before you smooth it out in the pan.

Insider Tip: I recently discovered this trick where you put a piece of wax paper in the bottom of a baking dish and you spray the wax paper with non-stick spray. This makes it so much easier to remove the fudge all in one piece.

While the fudge mixture is cooking in the microwave you can crush the candy canes. I use 2 regular-size peppermint candy canes. You can use a rolling-pin or the bottom of a glass coffee cup for crushing the candy canes into bits.

Lastly, sprinkle the crushed candy canes on top of the fudge. If your batch of fudge has cooled a little then lightly press the candy cane sprinkles so they stay in a layer on top of the fudge.

Place glass dish in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours before removing the fudge.

Time to Feast on Fudge

Gently remove the fudge out of the glass baking dish by lifting the wax up and out. Peel the fudge off of the wax paper and it should very easily remove in one piece. Lay fudge down on a cutting board.