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Darling Sweet, the company behind South Africa’s favourite range of toffees and soft caramels turned 10 on 14 July 2024, and, to celebrate its decade in the confectionery world, owners Hentie van der Merwe and Frits van Ryneveld have launched their latest sweet offering – Fudge!

Says van Ryneveld: “When we launched our first toffees in 2014, we never in our wildest imaginations dreamt that 10 years later we would be producing 10 different flavour toffees, eight different flavour soft caramels, three types of toffee spread and now that iconic of all sweets, fudge!”

In between munching on some deliciously smooth and tasty fudge, we spoke to van Ryneveld about Darling Sweet’s new line of confectionery.

First toffees, then caramels and now fudge! Why fudge?

We started manufacturing traditional toffees back in 2014 as we felt there was an opening in the market for a chewy toffee made the traditional way with the best ingredients. We had numerous requests for a softer option and decided to launch a soft caramel in 2018. Following on from our toffees and soft caramels we were looking for opportunities to widen our offering, and fudge was the obvious choice as it is a product known and adored by most South Africans. It is definitely related to toffee and caramel, even though it has a totally different mouthfeel and experience associated with it.

An interesting fact: Darling was famous for its fudge way before we started our confectionery manufacturing plant in the village. A gentleman from Darling, Hugh Davies, was famous for his Darling fudge which he produced for over 20 years, selling it to shops in and around the village. Last year Hugh and his wife Sheila decided to move to Johannesburg to be closer to their daughter and, at the age of 89, he offered us his fudge recipe and officially gave us permission to continue with the tradition. And we had the solution for our new line offering!

How long did it take you to develop the recipe?

Hentie graciously used Hugh’s old recipe, fine-tuned it and figured out how to up-scale the volume for production in our Darling Sweet kitchen. We have been savouring fudge attempts for the past 12 months. Yum!

Can you share some of the ingredients?

Our full range of ingredients is top quality with no added preservatives. We use as locally sourced butter as possible as well as top quality sugar and condensed milk. To make our range accessible to a wider audience the range is also certified Kosher and Halaal.

The fudge has a pattern in it. Can you explain?

As it is handmade it is smeared and has a beautiful textured look.

What flavour is the fudge?

As always, we have started with the perfect traditional flavour!

Are there plans to develop more flavours?

Watch this space.

Can you describe the texture of the fudge?

While some fudges are crumbly, soft and squishy or hard, Darling Sweet Fudge has the smoothest mouthwatering texture.

Where can fudge lovers buy it?

Our products are available in select shops as well as in deli’s and farmstalls countrywide and also online at our store. Anyone visiting Darling can also try, and buy, our range at our tasting room in Darling.

Anything else you’d like to add?

A fun thing being introduced to our packaging - to help distinguish between the different lines - is the shape of the window on the front panel. On our toffee packaging it is in the shape of a circle, for the soft caramels it’s a hexagon and – for the fudge and to celebrate our 10 years – it’s a diamond!