You don’t have to wait for farmers’ markets and fairs to get your hands on this local favourite any more with six flavours going on sale as part of Sourced Locally initiative.

It’s been 10 years in the making, and now a fudge company from Suffolk is taking its biggest leap into retail yet by supplying all 52 East of England Co-op stores in Suffolk.

Yum Yum Tree Fudge, based near Bury St Edmunds, began as a passion project for Lily Turner who decided for Christmas 2008 to make edible gifts for friends and family. As husband Adrian says: “Lily’s mum is Burmese and always says if you give a present, it has to be the best quality.”

This certainly rubbed off on the entrepreneur and the five flavours she presented to the lucky few went down so well Lily started selling her fudge at the local post office, branching out into farmers’ markets. Today, the Yum Yum Tree Fudge stall is a regular at markets and events, where customers can be seen huddled around the stand tasting samples from the 20 or more flavours, and Lily and Adrian count Harrolds as a client.

From the core range, Co-op customers can now get their hands on Salted Caramel, Salted Butterscotch, Belgian Dark Chocolate, Belgian White Chocolate, Madagascan Vanilla and Mint Chocolate Chip fudge in stores, with tastings currently going on up and down the county and with a fudge factory in the planning thanks to advice and help from the Co-op Sourced Locally Team.

“What makes the fudge stand out,” says Lily, “is the secret recipe. It has slightly less sugar and more dairy, more butter. We use condensed milk and a natural sweetener, xylitol, to lower the sugar content. Plus, we’ll only ever use natural flavours – that’s part of our ethos. There’s an art to fudge making. We choose to use the higher quality ingredients which means people are less likely to copy us!”

“It’s all about quality,” adds Adrian. “Our fudge tastes great and is really creamy and we focus entirely on consistency. We will throw batches away if we don’t think they’re good enough. Our journey has been obsessively nerdy, and all about getting it to be better than everyone else. Because we use less sugar our product doesn’t set like normal fudge and can take days, but rather than a bar of pure sugar, you end up with something so much better. We do argue a lot (in a nice way) over flavours. Recently we did rose and I’ll say it’s strong enough but Lily will say she can’t taste it. I think people think we’re a bit bonkers!”

New flavours on the horizon for 2019 include raspberry ripple and pineapple, and there’s an expanding range of no sugar added fudge, made entirely with xylitol (currently in ginger, chocolate orange, vanilla and chocolate mint).

“We make our Purely Plant Based fudge too,” says Lily. “We don’t claim it’s vegan but it’s made with coconut. So far there’s Plain Coconut, Belgian Chocolate Coconut, Pineapple and Coconut and Mint Chocolate Coconut.

Her favourite flavours? “I like the salted ones, and they are always popular with customers. Salt brings a bit of depth and balance to the fudge. I like our liquorice fudge too which I must say is, like the rest of the range , totally gluten-free.”