Brief Notes Of A Sponge-Head

A Testimonial from Rock Island, IL

Sometime just before Valentine’s Day 2006 an email appeared in my inbox. We are always happy to receive good news but this fan letter defines the testimonial art.

Subject: A fan letter [hope I got the right email]

Greetings Buffalonians of my Heart!

Thanks to my secretary’s generous grandmother, who visits us every year at Christmas, I have been treated to your sponges- something I had been missing since my long-ago childhood.

Indeed, you make the best sponges I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve had them from Belgium, Mexico, other European places such as Switzerland. And you have the best chocolate.

Here where I live there’s an old Italian family that makes chocolate sponges but only at Christmas. It is quite good. But- treason!!- nowhere near as good as yours. Now that we have found the website, my secretary got your little card during her visit to her hometown in June, we will be ordering!

Something challenged me, though. When I first looked through your site: describing the experience of eating chocolate sponges. I took up this challenge as a teen, when no one around here had any inkling of sponge candy.

I told my friend: “You’ve seen the dry sponge on your mom’s sink? Imagine you eat it. It is delicious, being a form of caramel. Then as you get past the delicate light-texture crunch, it melts in your mouth. The chocolate is like the overture and the entremesso.”

My friend was very smart- but imaginative he was not. He would not touch chocolate sponges I brought for him!

Anyway, from my heart of hearts, a descendant of small-time confectioners, I salute you… and thanks for over 22 years of FANTASTIC chocolate sponges!

Respectful Thanks,
Elder Rev. Dr. Antonio Hernandez,
Buddhist Order of the Shade

Dear Dr. Hernandez,

I am again apologizing for not responding to your email quick enough. First I can claim a computer problem but since then it has been the busy-ness of getting ready for Valentines Day.

While I have met many thousands of Sponge Candy fans, I am sure I haven’t met one with your much varied experience. You must have sampled every possible permutation of Sponge Candy in the world! It is this that makes your praise of our Sponge Candy very high. Anybody can like what they eat but few really know what they like.

Sandy and I both have enjoyed your email. While it’s always nice to be told that you’re doing a good job, it’s not often expressed so exuberantly. Might we use your fan letter on our web site when I expand it this summer? And if yes, would you want your identity removed or to remain in place?

Again, thank you for a most wonderful fan letter.

Confectionately,

Gary Whitt
CandyMaker.at.SpongeCandy.com
www.SpongeCandy.com

Greetings

Thanks for the follow-up. I’ve been a bit ill and I keep away from the net at such times - my apologies.

Many thanks for the praise - if I may use that word. It’s that my mother and my grandmother, God rest them, were candy connoisseurs. And we have a diverse background. With us it was always candy first and culture second!

You may indeed use my comments on the site, properly identified and everything. In fact, I used to write for an online literary journal and I quit with them just before I did a short paper on your chocolate sponges.

But… I’d still like to do that paper, from a personal experience standpoint. It’ll be super short, when it is done, I’ll send it to you. You can add it to the site if you wish.

Your quarter-of-a-century-devoted,
Elder Rev. Dr. Antonio Hernandez

At this point, Sandy and I felt a little appreciation needed to be shown for this unexpected gift. So we sent some Sponge Candy.

Dear Gary and Sandy,

Your gift arrived today and I could hardly believe my eyes. Over the last quarter of a century, you have provided me with one of the best gifts of my life: the greatest sponge candy.

Today, I opened a box, and saw a pound of milk chocolate and a pound of dark chocolate sponges. What a blessing from God! Such great and generous people as you should exist all over the earth. The gift actually caused a tear in my eye, of joy.

I send you a pathetic and humble gift of a drawing, a sketch in the old tradition of my religion. The priest at the bottom was a famous Chinese confectioner. He made candy in secret and gave it to the children in the village. Because of the world’s cruelty, the other Buddhist priests did not believe this generous, humble man was enlightened.

They demanded to know the theory” of being a servant of God, as all Buddhist monks are known. He threw his sack of candies to the ground, saying nothing. The priests were impressed with his sly answer. Seeking to trip him up, they asked him if he could show them the true actions of a servant of God. At that, he retrieved his bag and turned his back on the hypocrite priests. He went back to the children to finish giving them their candy. And that was his answer to the question of doing Gods work.

Your kind gesture reminded me of this story, and the priest, a real person who lived around 1100 A.D. and was named Hu-tai. This man is the fat Buddha statue you always see. He was a real person, arid a candy-maker of God!

Again, humble and deep thanks. This gift is a treasure.

This continues in the next section: Brief notes of a Sponge-Head.

Brief notes of a Sponge-Head

BRIEF NOTES OF A SPONGE-HEAD
By Elder Rev. Dr. Antonio Hernandez

Sponge candy― which in my home we used to call “chocolate sponges”, “sea-foam candy” and “fairy food”― goes back a long ways. First made around the late 19th century, it was an immediate success. No one can settle on who made it first, but Buffalo is the favorite guess. That bet is thanks to old Joseph Fowler, who came from England and began making candy in Buffalo. Undoubtedly, Fowler learned to make it in England in Victorian times.

We have some small proof: John Brown, groundsman for Her Majesty Queen Victoria (and center of a major controversy) once complained that, although the queen loved “chocolate sponges”, and ordered a certain number of them for each outing, Brown demanded: “Do they ever bother to count them for her? !” So there is a bit of a spoiler for those who say sponge candy was invented in early 20th century Buffalo. In any case, sponge candy has priority as well as royal patina.

As a sponge candy lover, one who has been blessed to taste samples from all over the earth, I love Ko-Ed of South Buffalo best of all. Such praise does not come easily or lightly; it is without argument the best in the world. I first tasted it by mere chance a quarter of a century ago, when a dear friend brought me some from her native Buffalo. She lived on Ryan Street, not far from the confectionary. I even recall with great fondness the now-familiar plain white box, simply lettered in foil. I kept the box for over a year, that first time. It still makes my heart skip a beat, to see a new box of the candy.

And that first Ko-Ed chocolate sponge was out of this world. There is no contesting that fact― but to this day, each and every one I eat tastes just as good as that first one. As the company says, the chocolate is the vital component, and their chocolate also ranks as the finest I’ve sampled. It is unlike ordinary American chocolate: it holds its own along with the best of Belgium, Switzerland and Mexico. Today I will not usually touch sponge candy unless it has come from these great confectioners in South Buffalo. Being a poor Buddhist monk, I cannot afford splendor… BUT SPONGES ARE ANOTHER MATTER!