The Fudge Kitchen

What is fudge?

Well, fudge is a confectionery!

It is made from sugar, butter and milk. Now, you may ask, “is that all?” No, that’s not even the slightest of it! Fudge is something one can’t really describe. You should just taste it to understand what it is. But, beware _ a 100 gram serving may have over 450 calories kcal! And imagine, if it has nuts or other things in it, your energies may just soar!

Have you ever seen how fudge is made? Well, I have. But to be honest, I haven’t seen it prepared in front of me. I just saw it on youtube, but the technique is really time-consuming and hard, if you ask me. So, when you mix all those ingredients, then you must heat it about 240 °F (116 °C) so that it is in a soft-ball stage and then you beat the mixture while it cools. And that’s for acquiring a smooth and creamy consistency. While it sounds kind of easy, it is not, and it requires a lot of work to be done.

A brief history

To be honest, I thought fudge was a traditional British dish or something like that. Well, at least it was European. But I was wrong. Its origins go back to the 19-th century and all the way to the United States of America. It’s known that acquaintance of Emelyn Battersby Hartridge (a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York) made fudge in 1886 and sold it for 40 cents a pound. That was when Emelyn studied the recipe and made it in 1888 for the Vassar College Senior Auction and it became really popular. Since then many variations have been made of the recipe and people just love tasting new versions of fudge.

There’s another thing, too. It’s said, that when a college lecturer was taking a class in toffee making it didn’t come out right and the result was not something they anticipated and they called it “fudge”. And that’s why this term is used to indicate a mistake or error!

Discovering Fudge Kitchen

On our first day in Cambridge, we went out for a walk and we wanted to sightsee the city of Cambridge and just look around and take pictures. King’s Parade is one of the splendid streets in Cambridge, where King’s College and Great St. Mary’s Church are located with many other things. Opposite King’s College you can see this darkish green shop, that is called Fudge Kitchen.

There was this man dressed in white with a cook’s white hat and a green apron holding a green sign in his hands. My friends went there and so did I. It turned out that he was offering people free samples of fudge and since I didn’t know what fudge was and it was free to taste it, I decided to go in and see what was there. Going in, I was dazzled by all those various products put there and I couldn’t really see exactly what was where. They offered so many things, that I couldn’t decide which one to choose or taste or whatever. It was crazy! Then, I chose two of them, I guess, finally and they cut some pieces of them and let me taste them. It was amazing. I hadn’t had anything like that before and I was kind of shocked by the flavor and the environment there, too.

Then, I decided to stop by some other day and buy some fudge there. Maybe to take it home to Georgia for my family if it was possible. And, I’ll tell you that I did take some fudge to Georgia and my family members could taste them. I still have this box they gave to me and where they put those different fudges when I bought them.

About Fudge Kitchen

Well, they first started making fudge as Jim Garrahy’s Fudge Kitchen in 1983 and this is a well-known fudge shop in Cambridge and some people go to Cambridge especially for this Fudge Kitchen to experience fudge prepared there. They also have shops in Bath, York, Canterbury, Windsor, Edinbugh and Oxford. And if you can’t visit any of those shops, you can order your fudge online and it will arrive packed to you!

The main thing about the Fudge Kitchen is that they have changed one of the ingredients! So, I’ve told you that there are three main ingredients: sugar, butter and milk. Well, they changed butter and instead of butter they use whipping cream. Imagine, using whipping cream instead of butter _ the consistency will be much softer and creamy and that’s what this is all about! Their fudge has a creamy soft texture and distinctive flavor.

They offer over 50 flavors from double chocolate to strawberry and cream. They have many different types of fudge and all of them are great in taste. One can’t really decide which one to eat. They even make special flavors for Christmas and holidays like that. You can even have a drinking fudge, which is something like hot chocolate drink, but they are all in different flavors!

So, I remember I bought a 4 slice box of fudge. There’s this thing _ they offer you buying 4 or 6 slice box, which costs 16 and 22 pounds respectively. There are many flavours worth tasting, such as Belgian Chocolate Swirl, Double Trouble, Hazelnut Heaven, Chocolate Orange (those were the ones that I chose then, because I really love everything made from chocolate!), Rum & Raisin, and many others.

You can even buy a Fudge Experience and learn about fudge and how it’s done and you can make fudge yourself, too!

Well, if you can’t decide which fudge to choose, try Dark Chocolate & Sea Salt _ that’s their manager Lee Coaton’s favourite flavor. "You dont have to be a nutter to like nuttery buttery peanut butter fudge" _ and these are his words posted on their website.