If you have a sweet tooth, Murdick’s Fudge is one of the Vineyard’s best-loved treats. Depending on demand, they make anywhere from 180 to 1,200 pounds of fudge each day.
The Murdicks actually migrated here from another island — starting as a family business in Michigan on Mackinac Island in 1887.
Henry and his son Newton Jerome (Rome) Murdick opened the first fudge store, calling it Murdick’s Candy Kitchen. The store was in a building where Henry made sails, and Rome made fudge using his mother Sara’s recipe.
Fast forward to 1955, and a young entrepreneur, Bob Benser, Sr., arrived on Mackinac Island. He built and ran a Tastee Freeze ice cream shop next to Murdick’s Candy Kitchen. According to the store’s website, Jerome and his wife Grace treated Bob like the son they never had. Bob stepped in to help Grace keep the business open when Jerome became ill. He learned how to make fudge — the exact cooking and shaping temperatures and the all-important fudge-paddle movements. Benser subsequently bought the business in 1969.
The journey to the Vineyard began when his college friend Charlie Asselin came on vacation in the late 1970s. Seeing that the former Edgartown post office was for sale, he convinced Benser it would be the perfect place to start a fudge shop in another hotbed of summer tourism.
Benser acquired the Edgartown store in 1979 and another in Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven soon after. The two friends became partners, and Asselin ran the stores until 1993, when the current general manager, Mike McCourt, came from Michigan to take over. “I’ve been here ever since, so I guess it was a fit made to happen.”
McCourt did a two-week boot camp at Murdick’s on Mackinac Island before arriving on our shores. “That was my introduction to fudge. I knew how to eat it; I just didn’t know how to make it. It was pretty sketchy when I left, but when I started operating the business and making fudge every day, I could handle my own after 31 years.”
Murdick’s still makes the fudge using Sara’s 137-year-old recipe, passed down through the generations. Each batch starts in a copper kettle and is made with real butter, cream, sugar, and flavorings, creating about 30 pounds of fudge. The mixture is poured onto their renowned marble tables, giving the candy a unique texture and providing a “stage” on which to show eager onlookers how the confection is made.
Each batch starts in a copper kettle and is painstakingly created, paying attention to indoor, outdoor, and marble countertop temperatures, length of time, and the correct temperature required for cooking, boiling, stirring, cooling, and shaping into enormous loaves that are then cut into thick slices.
“Temperature is key. That’s why we use marble,” McCourt explains. “It does two things. It helps cool the fudge down, but at the same time, it stores the heat in the table so that the cooling-off process is gradual. If it were sharp, the fudge would never set up. If you used cold stainless steel, it would suck all the heat out of the fudge, and it would never set. The store is set at 65-70 degrees to make sure not to suck the heat out of the fudge.”
Chocolate and fudge might seem synonymous, but, in fact, Murdick’s cooks up a wide assortment of enticing flavors in addition to plain vanilla and chocolate. There is butter pecan, chocolate peanut butter, cranberry, vanilla or chocolate pecan, chocolate walnut, peanut butter, rocky road, and smores.
In addition, Murdick’s sells its justly famous Caramel Corn made with brown sugar and molasses, Cheese Corn with its tangy cheddar cheese and cream, and peanut and cashew brittle, and taffy.
McCourt reflects on his adopted home, “When I first came, I didn’t know what to think. There are not too many buildings over 50 years old in the Midwest. Here there are a lot of buildings over 150 years old. The architecture is definitely different.”
He wasn’t sure initially what he was getting into. “But like everybody who has visited the Vineyard or spent any time here, the place grows on you. It’s been a blessing being out here. I enjoy the people and the Island. And how concerned everybody is about everyone else and pitches in when somebody gets in trouble. I think it’s a very unique place.”
McCourt is keeping the Murdick’s fudge tradition alive and the Island full of their treats. And one of the great things about the delicious indulgences — they are all gluten-free.
Mudick’s Fudge locations: 21 N. Water St., Edgartown, 508-627-8047; 5 Circuit Ave., Oak Bluffs, 508-693-2335; 79 Main St., Vineyard Haven, 508-693-7344; and Murdick’s Café at 19 N. Water St., Edgartown, 508-627-7605. www.originalmurdicksfudge.com.
