I am a candyholic. One piece of candy is too much. Two pounds at one sitting? Not nearly enough. It is somewhat ironic then that CapeMay.com’s offices should be above The Original Fudge Kitchen on the Washington Street Mall where I am faced with temptation every morning as the lovely sweet aroma of chocolate fudge cooking in the kettles below wafts upstairs and fills the offices with its heavenly fragrance. I breathe it in and resolve everyday that I will “DIS” the person handing out fudge samples just below our front window. I will walk on by as though I don’t have a yen for fudge because once I have tasted the milky mixture, I will be lured into the Fudge Kitchen and completely surrender into buying “Two pounds of our creamy fudge” so I can get “a free box of salt water taffy.”

Don’t get me wrong. I have bought fudge before but only as a present for others. Once in a while, I am tempted to buy a quarter pound of chocolate-covered pretzels – for medicinal purposes only. So, it is with some trepidation that I agree, in honor of Valentines Day to spend a day in the life of a candy maker – namely Joe Bogle, who along with his younger brother Paul, started The Original Fudge Kitchen on the boardwalk in North Wildwood in 1972 when he was 17 years-old and his brother was 15.

“We were looking for a way to pay for our college tuitions,” he says. “We first called it The Fudge Kitchen but then the next year someone else opened a store with a similar name. So we renamed ours The Original Fudge Kitchen.” Proving, he says, that good almost always comes from adversity. “It was the best thing we ever did. People loved the word original and it made us stand out.”

So, that brings me back to my assignment – the day in the life of a candy maker and my candy addiction. I prepare myself with gum. If I’m chewing gum, I can’t eat any candy. Right? I am also armed with our Art Director and photographer Stephanie Madsen who shares my problem. Power in numbers, don’t you agree? We are invincible. We are strong. Hear us roar: We will not eat any candy while spending the day with the candy man.

Martin is already stirring the pot (literally, not figuratively speaking) when we arrive. The vanilla fudge mixture is boiling over a pot of water (think of mega double broiler). He stirs it with a four-foot long, wooden paddle being careful not to get burnt as the creamy concoction bubbles up. Beside the giant pot are the ingredients for the next batch of fudge – a measuring cup filled with 13 pounds of sugar. Thirteen pounds of sugar!! Three quarts of cream!! And huge bags of chocolate liquor wafers for the chocolate fudge.

“Here try one of these,” says Joe, offering Stephanie and I a wafer. “There’s no sugar in it until we add it. It’s pure chocolate.”

Well. Ok. If there’s no sugar, I take my gum out and try and small taste. Stephanie and I both wince at the bitterness of the taste. He’s right. There’s not a drop of sugar in it.

In the summertime, the candymakers begin at 9 in the morning and continue ten hours a day, six days a week. Today, since Valentines Day is looming, they are making Valentine hearts filled with fudge. Out in the retail area, the chocolate fudge is sitting in copper kettles to cool just waiting for the candymakers to start whippin’ that fudge. Meanwhile the ladies are individually wrapping chocolates to go into the prepared boxes of candy. Marlene is carefully carrying back the hearts. Fudge has already been poured into them from the whipped batch which Hank has just finished.

Joe cautions her not to put a lid on the heart because all the fudge has to sit in the baking pans or molds for two days before it is ready to be cut, otherwise, it will crumble when cut. Then Joe picks up the five-foot long walnut paddle (walnut doesn’t splinter) and we’re off. It’s like watching the pizza man throw the dough in the air. When the paddle gets rolling the fudge whips into the air like a chocolate rocket and springs back into the kettle. Once you start whipping the fudge, you can’t stop until it’s all mixed which takes about 15 minutes. There’s no one to tell you when to stop, you just have to know. That’s why it takes two months to apprentice as a candymaker. “Then you pour the fudge into the baking pans or heart molds,” says Joes, “After that, you go in for the kill for this last one.” He takes a special “flexible metal” spatula which bends as it swirls around the kettle grabbing every last, wonderful, gooey morsel of fudge. When he’s finished, the copper kettle is almost clean of fudge mix.

It’s nice that Joe is such a master candymaker, but I want to try, so I run up to the front window where the candymaker stands and whips the fudge in front of many wondering eyes in the summer. Hank is at the helm today whipping that fudge in the air, in complete Fudge Kitchen attire – white chef’s hat, navy blue shirt and white pants – and I ask him to teach me how to do this, because I am very hands on and this looks like fun.

“Take the paddle,” Hank says, “and go from front to back in one smooth sweep.”

Well that’s easy enough. I, of course, immediately digress. I see all that fudge around the copper kettle and I can’t resist doing circular motions, wishing it were my fingers that were sneaking a taste of fudge.

“No,” Hank nicely corrects me, “You really need to go from front to back, otherwise the fudge doesn’t whip.” He does not say, “And put a little muscle into it,” but I figure that out by myself. Ok. Five whips and I’m tired. I never do get the fudge to go up high in the air. In fact, I barely get it to reach the other side. It’s like treading through molasses. It looks wonderfully creamy and yummy, but I’m clearly out of my league here so I hand the paddle back to the expert and move over to the ladies wrapping the chocolates.

Being behind the counter surrounded by big glass jars of all kinds of old-fashioned candies, each clearly marked, is truly like being a kid in a candy store. I spy some candy I recognize on the shelf.

“Oh Stephanie loves these. What are they?” I ask Laura.

“Homemade Non-Pareils,” she says.

“Oh, you have got to try one,” says Joe.

“Oh no. I have gum. See? I have gum so I won’t try one.”

“There’s nothing like it. Come on.” And he has one in his hand. It wouldn’t be polite to refuse.

“Well, alright. Just one.”

AHHHH. Can I just say? Yummy. Then, I start looking around. Salt water taffy midgets, Necco wafers (not in a package like you get in the store but loose), Legos or sweet tarts, jumbo gum drops, licorice pastels (we know them as Good N Plenties), log-style salt water taffy in all kinds of flavors – strawberry, cherry, vanilla, molasses.

“Oh these are my favorites,” I say as I spot not just the usual jelly beans but an entire container of only licorice jelly beans. “I love licorice.”

“Try one,” says Joe handing me a couple.

“Hold on.” And I run out of the store and deposit my chewing gum in the trash. I surrender. I’m tasting everything I can. I am powerless.

“Well, if you like licorice, you’ll really like these,” says Laura, “Old-fashioned licorice nibs with kookaburra (whatever that is) imported from Australia. And she hands me one. Heaven. I’m in Heaven. Never have I tasted anything so fabulous. So, what else do we have? Oh my gawd! Peanut butter logs. These are my favorites! Try one? Sure. Halleluiah!! Halleluliah! Hall-eeee-luliah! What else can I try? Oh. They have those cute little Valentine message hearts. Chocolate-covered pretzels. These are my favorites! And fudge. There’s no stopping me now.

Joe and Stephanie must escort me out of the store. I can’t stop. Joe has helped get me closer to the door by handing Stephanie and I each a box of fudge and a huge box of chocolate-covered pretzels.

I didn’t do so well as a candymaker but I certainly am a candy lover. I think that’s a pretty good combo. In a town where so much is changing and has changed, it’s good to know that we still have an old-fashioned candy store. As I leave, I hear Laura saying, “It’s a little over a pound, is that all right?”

A brief history of candymaking by the sea

You can almost trace the history of the shore by its candy stores. You can certainly trace the history of the Bogle Brothers by their candy stores – which total six in number.

To begin, Joe Bogle started his candy making career at the age of 12 when he got a summer job at Sagel’s Candies on Beach Avenue near the Beach Theater. Harry Sagel, whose father Louis Segal started Sagel’s Candies in the late 1800s, opened his first candy store on the Wildwood boardwalk at Lincoln Avenue in 1918. At one time, his store in Cape May was across the street on the pier by Convention Hall until the Nor’easter of March 1962 came along and swept it out to sea.

Harry Sagel was in his 80s the summer of ’68 when Joe got a job at the Cape May store. Harry showed Joe everything you needed to know about being a candy man and three years later observed, “You know, you’re pretty good at this.”

In the summer of 1972, the Bogle brothers, with the help of Harry’s children, who ran the stores on the Wildwood Boardwalk, helped Joe and Paul get started. Five years later when Joe had finished college, Baxter’s Candy Store on the promenade in Cape May was for sale and the brothers opened their second store. Baxter’s, owned by Irene and Dick Baxter, was another candy store started in the late 1800s as was Roth’s Candyland at 513 Washington Street. George Roth sold both his business and the building to the Bogles in 1982 where they still make and package candy today.

They started out just making fudge but got so many requests for salt water taffy that in the summer of 1977, the brothers went on a quest for the perfect salt water taffy recipe. They found both the recipe and the taffy pulling machine, circa 1917, in Atlantic City, of course. Where else would you find the perfect recipe for salt water taffy? Did you know that only in South Jersey is the taffy wrapped in log shapes? Everywhere else in the country the taffy is round. Marty Berdinas, owner of Atlantic Coast Candies and the Candy Corner, whose folks had been making candy since, you guessed it, the late 1800s, was getting ready to close their doors. That recipe is still used today at the Fudge Kitchen. And the machine? A couple of years ago, when it needed a part, Joe had to write to the Library of Congress to get the specifications and had local tool and dye guy make the part.

Well, we could go on and on but we just wanted to give you a taste of how the family tree of one candy store can thread generations of history not only in terms of the candymaking itself but the bright, energetic entrepreneurs that helped make the shore a great place to visit.