After 15 years in the beauty industry, Rosemary Cimino and her family packed up their lives in the city and bought a bakery in the bush. It was the biggest gamble of their lives.

That was until five years later they sold their award-winning bakery so Rosemary could pursue her dream of making fudge.

Today she is the proud owner of Spotted Dog Fudge, producing at least 2000 bars of the sweet treats from her home in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges.

“My husband was a truck driver and neither of us had any experience when we went into the bakery, but we wanted to live in the country and knew our kids would love it,” Rosemary recalls.

The couple transformed the small country bakery into a successful business, developing their own recipes, award-winning vanilla slice, pies and bread, and even a gluten-free range.

Rosemary fell in love with creating sweets and wanted to try her hand at making fudge, but didn’t have time with her busy schedule.

“I also wanted more time with my children, so I decided to give it a try. I wanted to make a product that didn’t dry out if you didn’t eat it all the same day.”

The Cimino family had already adopted a mostly gluten-free diet due their daughter being gluten intolerant, so the fudge also had to be gluten free.

“We had a lot of demand for gluten-free products in the bakery. At the time it was very hard for people to find good tasting gluten-free options.”

Spotted Dog Fudge is now available in more than 20 varieties, including plenty of options for chocolate lovers like choc-orange swirl, choc-mint swirl, choc-macadamia, choc-caramel and peanuts, and chilli chocolate.

The fudge recipe is 100% gluten free and so too now is Rosemary’s entire range. She recently ceased production on her gluten varieties, M&M and Peppermint Crisp, to dedicate her time to meet the needs of others with gluten intolerances.

Spotted Dog Fudge releases three new flavours each year, and next off the production line will be rum and raisin, salted caramel, and ginger.

www.spotteddogfudge.com.au