Lining Oxford’s busy Cornmarket Street are the bright neon-coloured shop fronts of big high street names, and busy shoppers laden with carrier bags. Just off the main street, in the smaller and more compact Broad Street there lies a tiny, traditional shop that feels like a step back in time.
Shop assistants at Jim Garrahy’s Fudge Kitchen wear traditional green uniforms and aprons, and towards the back of the shop, in full view of the customers, there is an area where the fudge is made and, more importantly where the warm samples are given out immediately afterwards!
How the Fudge is Made
Firstly, the ingredients, which are made to an original recipe dating from 1830, are mixed and heated to over 230 degrees. The molten liquid is then poured onto a marble slab and turned and flipped with a spade-like tool while wall-mounted fans blow cool air onto the fudge to help it set. The fudge maker then changes to smaller paddle-like tools used to shape the fudge, turning all the time towards the centre of the slab until the mixture hardens. Eventually it is shaped into a humped sausage-shape and is then sliced up and served in the front of the shop.
What results from all this flipping and cooling is an intensely sweet, buttery taste, the texture slightly crunchy on the outside and as you bite into it, a soft fudgy consistency in the centre. It has a similar effect to an oozing chocolate brownie – gloriously decadent and persistently moreish.
The Fudge Kitchen makes twenty flavours, including Vanilla, Chocolate, Banoffee, After Dinner Mint, Mocha, and Strawberry. Whiskey Cream Supreme flavour is back on the menu after a short absence, and they also have a Dairy Free version (using soya cream) for those on special diets.
Jim Garrahy's Fudge Kitchen Makes Fudge the Old Fashioned Way
This shop provides a perfect detour for shoppers in no great rush, who might want to experience how fudge is made. Each batch takes around 40 minutes to make, and it is very interesting to see mousse-like hand made fudge being created in front of your eyes. The fudge does not need to be refrigerated and will last around 10 days (in normal emotional conditions) or can be frozen in which case it will last for a few months.
It is rare that customers can see something so traditional being made by hand in the middle of a modern High Street. Jim Garrahy’s Fudge Kitchen brings some of the tradition back to fudge making and allows the consumer to feel a part of the process, a 40-minute process that, in the twenty-first century, you feel almost privileged to see.
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