Around three decades ago when Karen Ruggles opened the Cinnamon Tree on Washington Street, she also started making homemade fudge.  Today, alongside store employee Cecile Jordan, Ruggles’ fudge making has become a staple for the downtown store with more than 1,500 batches made since the opening.

“We were very, very small in the beginning,” Ruggles said, adding that the idea to bring fudge into the store came from the owner of a shop called Darby’s in Natchez. “It was great, so we kept going.”

“We have some people who come in just to get fudge,” Ruggles said. “It’s a drawing point, especially for people who come in on the (river) boats. And we do have some locals who come in just for it, too.”

Throughout the year, between 12 and 15 varieties of fudge can be found at the Cinnamon Tree, but Ruggles and Jordan are constantly experimenting with new recipes.

“Sometimes we do weird little things,” said Jordan, who handles most of the fudge making now.

But the experimentation in the kitchen doesn’t always end in a great new recipe; sometimes the results haven’t turned out so well.

“I can tell you one that was a failure,” Jordan said. “We tried putting crumbled up chocolate chip cookies in the fudge, and it was a failure. I mean we sold most of it, but we didn’t have any repeat customers.”

But the duo has figured out the most popular types of fudge among their customers, including strawberry fudge in the spring and pumpkin fudge in the fall. Chocolate pecan seems to be the most popular crowd favorite year-round.

Jordan has only been involved in one major fudge making mishap since she started handling the duty about four years ago. She and a former employee were tending the store alone when they decided to make a batch, grabbing a couple of bags of chocolate out of an already open box in the back.

“We didn’t realize it was sugar free,” she said. “We cooked it and we cooked it and it would never set up. It was awful.”

Although they spend hours around chocolate everyday, the temptation to overindulge isn’t difficult to overcome, Jordan said.

“You get used to it, she said. “I’m not a chocaholic.”