7 Store-Bought Hot Fudge Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

I'm a sucker for hot fudge. When I worked at Steak 'n Shake in college, I had this clumsy habit of accidentally adding hot fudge to the milkshakes of guests who didn't ask for it, at which point I'd have to remake the shake the right way before delivering it to the guest. In a totally unintentional but very fortunate turn of event, I would sip the ruined shake rather than tossing it in the trash. Waste not, want not. 

When it's too cold for ice cream in winter and too hot for warm desserts in the summer, hot fudge sundaes manage to straddle the line between the seasons. So, in the midst of a recent heatwave, I was stoked to try every grocery store hot fudge that I could find. I sampled each one on its own at room temperature, fresh from the double boiler, and over a scoop of store-bought vanilla ice cream, then rated each one based on its flavor, texture, and value for the price. The top pick blew me away.

Reading the ingredient list, I did not have super high hopes for Mrs. Richardson's hot fudge, as the first five ingredients were: high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut oil, sugar, and water. Cocoa was on the list, but it was way down near the bottom with food starch. The jar says you can enjoy it straight out of the container, but it's definitely too firm for that, even at room temperature. Straight from the jar, it was cloyingly sweet — the intense kind of sugariness that burns the inside of your mouth. There was a noticeable chocolate flavor, but the overwhelming star of the show was sugar.

Once heated and poured over ice cream, the topping split, pooling around the ice cream at the bottom of the bowl. It tasted about the same on its own as it had at room temperature — a little chocolate, a lot of corn syrup — but once it was on the ice cream, it firmed up just right, and the chocolate flavor was definitely more apparent alongside the creaminess of the ice cream. On its own, it's not the greatest, but it's certainly passable with ice cream. But for $4.88 at Walmart, its flavor doesn't justify the price.

The Kroger Hot Fudge Dessert Topping was the only jar that had "artificially flavored" printed right there on the label, so it set the bar pretty low for itself, although it was also the only brand with milk as the first ingredient. Straight out of the jar, it had a distinctly sweet cake frosting flavor, which isn't bad — most of the fudges I tasted had this in common — but it was very sugary, and the artificial flavoring came through in the aftertaste.

As I heated the Kroger brand hot fudge in the double boiler, it separated a little bit, leaving a small puddle of clear liquid in the pan around the rest of the fudge. I assume this was due to the palm oil, and while it was a bit unsettling, it stirred back in and didn't separate again. It tasted better hot, too, with a silky mouthfeel, though the strange aftertaste was still there.

But vanilla ice cream apparently hides a multitude of sins, as the Kroger brand hot fudge was very good on the ice cream. With the added sweetness and creaminess of the ice cream, the artificial aftertaste wasn't so pronounced. The flavor and texture reminded me of fast food hot fudge sundaes — McDonald's, not Dairy Queen. But for $2.99 a jar — the least expensive of all the brands I tried — it's hard to complain.

Berryhill Hot Fudge Ice Cream Topping from Aldi has a nearly identical ingredient list as Mrs. Richardson's from Walmart, and straight out of the jar, it looks similar as well. Cold, the Berryhill hot fudge is super thick like store-bought cake frosting, but with a jelly-like consistency that slid right off my spatula and into the bowl without coating it at all.

Tasting Berryhill hot fudge at room temperature, it had more chocolate flavor and a less intense sugar flavor than Mrs. Richardson's, but the aftertaste was still very corn syrupy. In the double boiler, it still didn't cling to my spatula as I stirred, and developed a sort of globby texture that was more than a little unsettling. Fortunately, though, it tasted much better hot than cold on its own, and was super silky, coating the top of the ice cream without breaking. With the vanilla ice cream, it tasted very nostalgic, like the hot fudge sundaes of my childhood.

For $2.69 at Aldi, the Berryhill hot fudge is very good, in fact, and if someone just handed me a bowl of ice cream with it on top, I'd probably think it was delicious. But what I saw behind the scenes as I heated and stirred it was quite off-putting, making it hard to enjoy.

Unlike its Kroger brand cousin, the Private Selection Dark Chocolate Fudge Dessert Topping doesn't mention any artificial flavoring on the label, so I was looking forward to trying it. At room temperature, fresh from the jar, it was super glossy, like when you throw a pat of butter on top of a pan sauce. This makes sense since the Private Selection hot fudge is the only one on this list with real butter in the ingredients.

I could taste the real cocoa in it, and the chocolate liquor rounds out the flavor without becoming overly sweet. It's also thinner coming out of the jar, and is fully pourable at room temperature. So, you could theoretically enjoy a not-so-hot fudge sundae without heating it at all — but just once, because it firms up in the fridge.

The Private Selection Dark Chocolate Fudge was even better hot, like a steaming mug of dark chocolate cocoa, and coated the top of the vanilla ice cream without splitting. I'm not a food scientist, so I can't tell you why one fudge coats when another splits, but I can tell you it's much more appetizing.

With the ice cream, it didn't develop the textural contrast that I look for in hot fudge. I expected a little more bitterness from the dark chocolate, though, and was a bit disappointed on that front, too. But my main complaint is the price. At $4.99 a jar, it's tied for the most expensive hot fudge on this list, so I can't say that its price is justified. I also have questions about how it can be labeled "dark chocolate fudge" when it contains milk, but that's a fight for another day.

The first thing that struck me about the Hershey's hot fudge was the ingredient list. The second ingredient on the list is sweetened condensed milk, followed shortly after by skim milk and, near the end, a bit of whey for good measure. With all that milk, I was expecting a supremely creamy treat, and though I certainly wouldn't say I was disappointed, it wasn't quite what I was counting on.

The first scoop from the jar was super thick and very chocolatey, with the texture of a Hershey's bar that's been left in a pocket or a hot car. The flavor was very intensely sweet, but in a recognizable way — very distinctly Hershey's — that made it better than some of the other heavily sweetened hot fudges on this list. In the double boiler, it melts just like chocolate, too, clinging to the spatula.

While I tried to get most of the fudges on this list to a pourable consistency on the double boiler, I wasn't able to do that with the Hershey's hot fudge, because it started to act like it was going to scorch or seize before it got there, much like real Hershey's chocolate would. I had to sort of drop it onto the ice cream rather than pouring it. Overall, I'd say it was actually more chocolate than fudge. But it was, by far, the most fragrant of all the hot fudges when heated. It also had an excellent texture when combined with the ice cream — gooey, but not gummy. At $3.99, the Hershey's hot fudge is a great value, too, so it was going to be tough to beat.

As the commercials say, "With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good," and its hot fudge certainly is. The ingredients list looks a lot like most of the others on this list, though I did note that it contains both soybean and cottonseed oils, neither of which was found in any of the other fudges. It also contains vanillin, an artificial flavoring, but the jar is not labeled "artificially flavored."

But it is filled all the way to the top with a super thick, ganache-like fudge. The flavor at room temperature was super smooth, without the burning intensity of high fructose corn syrup, and it only got better when heated. Like the Hershey's hot fudge, the Smucker's never got super soft, even when it was burn-your-mouth hot, though it was still pourable.

With the ice cream, the rich chocolatey flavor still comes through loud and clear. It was good enough to elicit a maniacal chuckle from me as I dug in for my second bite and muttered, "This is what hot fudge should taste like." The texture contrast is spot-on, with a softened cake frosting consistency even when hot, and at $3.39 (on sale) at Kroger, it was a steal, too.

I knew the Smucker's original hot fudge was going to be tough to beat, which is why I sampled its Simple Delight Hot Fudge immediately afterward. I wanted to be sure there was a real, noticeable difference between the two — and boy, was there ever.

It had the shortest ingredient list of all the hot fudges I tried — just eight ingredients total, including skim milk, cocoa, and vanilla extract. It was super glossy, too, almost like there was butter in it, but I assume that must have been from the palm oil. And from the first taste, even at room temperature, it was immediately obvious that it was made from real, simple ingredients.

Like the rest of the top three contenders on this list, the Smucker's Simple Delight Hot Fudge stayed thick and gooey, even when it was super hot, but it coated the top of the ice cream rather than breaking, which was a surprise. It had that textural contrast between the thick, gooey fudge and the cool, melty ice cream, and it clung to the spoon for dear life. 

It was so good, I ate the whole bowl before my junior taste-testers could snag a bite, even after sampling four other fudges that same day. For $4.99 at Kroger, this was the most expensive hot fudge on the list, but it's worth every penny.

I purchased every variety of hot fudge at the three main grocery stores in my town — Kroger, Aldi, and Walmart — and sampled each one three times — once at room temperature, once hot on its own, and once with vanilla ice cream. To ensure consistency, I heated exactly one serving of each, measured by weight, in a double boiler — or, more accurately, a bowl floating in simmering water in an electric saucepan — and poured it over one scoop of vanilla ice cream. I then evaluated each one on a variety of factors — appearance, ingredient quality, flavor, texture, value for the money, and, most importantly, taste — to determine which was the best.