Is running a sweet shop as good as it sounds? RUTH MANSFIELD paid a visit to Undy to find out.

WORKING in a sweet shop – a job dreamed of by every small child who has read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

So when the opportunity came up to visit Undy’s The Fudge Fairy’s sweet shop for an afternoon of making fudge and serving customers, I was more than up for the “challenge”.

Arriving at the picturesque building, which is situated on Vinegar Hill, I literally was like a kid in a sweet shop as I walked in to be faced with shelves of old-fashioned sweets and bags of homemade fudge. Was this really classed as ‘work’?

The Fudge Fairy herself, owner Helen Beveridge, of Langstone, appeared from the back of the shop to greet me and after a short introduction, I was soon tying my hair back, putting an apron on and washing my hands ready to get down to some fudge-making business.

Making a batch of lemon meringue fudge was my task of the afternoon and as I placed two large blocks of butter into the pan to melt, I soon started to realise that making fudge is anything but a quick process.

That was when Mrs Beveridge told me the process of making fudge takes around 90 minutes alone. That’s not to mention a further 24 hours for the batch to cool and a further 40 minutes to cut the fudge and bag and label it.

Patience is not my best quality, but I was determined to do my best for these few hours, so I continued to chat away as I stirred the butter.

With sugar and evaporated milk then being among the added ingredients, Mrs Beveridge reminded me to keep on stirring, which was when I realised a second thing – making fudge is very good exercise for the arm muscles. Forget the Olympics: a few hours making fudge each day and you’ll soon have arm muscles to rival Sir Chris Hoy.

After lots and lots of stirring, and with an aching arm, I was quite happy to take a rest to break up the meringue nests and white chocolate and mix it with lemon essence, which would later be added to the fudge for flavouring.

But I wasn’t to be let off that lightly, as the spatula was soon placed back in my hand with the order that the fudge needed – you’ve guessed it – more stirring.

The stirring continued until the fudge mixture had reached the right temperature, which I was told was extremely important to ensure all the ingredients had fully melted.

It was a lot of waiting, but Mrs Beveridge told me that it’s one of her favourite parts of the day as making the fudge allows her to think about new flavours and her next ideas for the shop.

Since opening the shop in November last year, Mrs Beveridge has bought lots of new ideas to The Fudge Fairy and seen the business go from strength to strength.

What started as a business in her kitchen and visits to farmers’ markets and fairs is now a fully fledged sweet shop, selling a variety of flavours of fudge ranging from vanilla and white chocolate to some more extreme flavours including Marmite and chilli.

The shop also has every variety of old-fashioned sweet you can think of, as well as cards, gifts, jewellery, and accessories.

It really does feel like you’re on a seaside holiday when stepping inside.

And all this created by a woman who ironically used to work as a dental nurse.

“I knew you were going to laugh when I told you that,”

said Mrs Beveridge.

But after years of working in the dental business and then carrying out various other jobs, including as a call centre operator, Mrs Beveridge decided to take a summer break in Cornwall to decide what she wanted to do.

It was then that she discovered her passion for making fudge.

And with compliments from her family including sons Adam, 16 and James, 14, pushing her to set up her own business, the Fudge Fairy was born.

She said: “I just realised that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to make fudge.”

With the building on Vinegar Hill available, which Mrs Beveridge discovered was a family-run sweet shop back in the 1930s, it seemed like it was meant to be.

Now, seven months later, business is blooming, with Mrs Beveridge making an average of two batches a day (60 bags of fudge) to cater for her customers as well as the wedding and party favour orders which she receives.

The batch I was helping to make I discovered was batch number 121 which after a lot of stirring and one aching right arm, was finally ready to add the flavouring ingredients to.

As the fudge was then poured into the batches to cool, the opportunity came to serve my first customer as a young girl came in for her sweets.

Weighing out some sweets, putting them in a bag and handing them to a young girl while taking her coins might seem like a relatively simple task, but it’s quite a different story doing all of them together while being watched by customers, the shop owner and a photographer.

Although I kept up my friendly customer service, it took quite a while for the poor girl to receive all her goodies. This was mainly thanks to me losing sweet jar lids, forgetting to add up the cost of items and being rather slow when it came to scooping the sweets into the bag in fear that they were going to fly everywhere.

“Just imagine how I feel when there’s a queue going out of the door,” said Mrs Beveridge.

Suddenly working in a sweet shop didn’t seem the easy relaxing job I had initially thought.

Put it this way, when a second customer came in to buy some fudge to be wrapped as a gift, I happily left it to the expert. So then, it was time to move onto my last task of the afternoon – bagging up some fudge which had been made earlier by Mrs Beveridge and had been cooling in the fridge.

Bagging up some white chocolate and vanilla fudge, I tied a bow around it ready for the item to go on the shelf. My attempt stood out a bit from the Fudge Fairy’s bags, and not for the right reasons, but all in all, I was quite pleased with my attempt at working in the sweet shop and had had an enjoyable afternoon.

I even got to sample some fudge as a reward for my hard work. I know it’s a cliché but it really did melt in your mouth and I can only hope that my lemon meringue creation met the extremely high standard of the shop.

So with a bag of fudge in my hand, which lasted a whole five minutes back in the office, I left the shop with a bulging bicep and a completely different perspective on just what running a sweet shop entails.

But I can completely understand why Mrs Beveridge calls it her “dream job”.

Because as she said: “Who wouldn’t love to work in a sweet shop?”